Common property summer pastures constitute longstanding evidence that the tragedy of the commons can be prevented through self-organization. As a byproduct of their sustainable governance, high ...nature value farming systems with well-integrated patchy landscapes have existed for centuries. These common pool resources-which have historically needed protection from overexploitation-today suffer from underutilization, and their continued use is often contingent on government subsidies. The current study sought to identify which user, institutional, and resource attributes contribute to the sustainable use of high nature value summer pastures. Taking as our point of departure a recent field study of Swiss Alpine grazing lands, we set out to experimentally identify the most promising mechanisms for successful resource management in this context. To do so, we implement a controlled experiment that closely mirrors our field observations ("field-in-the-lab"), and parametrize our experiment to replicate field data. Our focus is on the institutional linkage of provision and appropriation. Our treatments varied across a range of parameters, ceteris paribus, to isolate which governance elements are most relevant; we did so to identify which policy options and scenarios should be prioritized in practical policy evaluations. It turns out that underappropriation appears to be the main management challenge for Swiss common property pastures today. Our analytical results suggest that current governance institutions-and, more specifically, how they link appropriation to provision requirements-might need to be overhauled. The most promising avenues for doing so appear to be increased provision requirements, incentivized overprovision, and appropriation subsidies. Thus, our study highlights promising institutional adaptations at various governance levels that potentially counteract the decreasing use of high nature value common property pastures in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.
The interaction between residential preferences and dwellings is a complex system whose function thus far remains insufficiently explored. In this paper, we investigate housing functions as ...orchestrators of households’ residential mobility in the context of Swiss rental housing. We propose a theoretical multi-step model and use survey data from 878 Swiss tenants to inspect the model’s linkages. From the statistical analysis, we firstly observe that tenants’ residential satisfaction is more likely to increase when the gap between ideal housing functions and those actually fulfilled by the current dwelling decreases. Secondly, results show that the effectiveness of an event (e.g. a job opportunity) in triggering the move is significantly related to both residential satisfaction and the functions the dwelling fulfils prior to the trigger. Thirdly, findings show that these trigger events can be grouped into three types: radical change, problem-solving and opportunity. With a medium effect size, a radical change was found to bring about the strongest change in housing functions between past and current dwellings. Lastly, in line with the hypothesis that residential preferences vary over the life course, socio-demographic characteristics and tenancy types are found to be significant explanatory variables for households’ ideal housing functions. By disentangling the complexity of the housing system, the proposed multi-step model can be used to integrate households’ preferences with supply-side constraints in agent-based model simulations, thereby contributing to fostering the provision of quality housing, i.e. dwellings able to meet the needs of current and future occupants.
The common property meadows in the Swiss Alps have been managed by local self-organized governance systems since the Middle Ages, thus preventing their overuse. During the past century, socioeconomic ...developments, such as industrialization and rapid nonagricultural economic growth, have shifted employment opportunities from the agricultural sector towards the service sector. In the agricultural sector, this has led to less intensive use and maintenance of the meadows in the Alps and consequently to a reduction in biodiversity. We use the example of Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps to analyze how the governance system has adapted to these socioeconomic developments. We based our analysis on the Program in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems (PIASES). We coded five statutes ranging in date from 1867 to 2003, and conducted interviews to investigate changes in the governance system. In so doing, we focused on changes in the operational rules that structure the focal interactions between the social system and the ecological system, namely harvesting level and investment activities. Our results show that the governance system has adapted to the socioeconomic changes (1) by creating an additional organizational subunit that allows appropriators to alter operational rules relatively autonomously, and (2) through changing several operational rules. We conclude by outlining the properties of the governance system that have allowed for constant harvesting levels and investment activities over time.
Food consumption is among the activities with the most significant environmental impacts, and furthermore contributes to rising health costs. We explored the factors that foster or hinder healthy and ...sustainable eating in Switzerland. Based on an online household survey with 620 respondents, we first determined the disability adjusted life years and greenhouse gas impacts associated with individuals' dietary habits to measure healthy and environmentally sustainable eating. We then relate the nutritional health and environmental impacts to individual's intentions, and explore what interpersonal and societal factors foster or hinder healthy and sustainable eating. Results suggest that intentions for healthy eating are stronger than intentions to eat environmentally sustainable and that intentions for healthy eating transmit better into behavior than intentions for environmentally sustainable eating. Males and females had similar intentions but males showed substantially higher dietary related health impacts with 12 min of healthy life lost per day and 14% higher carbon footprint than females. Furthermore, vegan and vegetarian diets yielded very high nutritional health benefits of >23 min of healthy life gained per person and day, mostly realized through the reduced intake in processed and red meat and increased consumption of nuts, wholegrain, and to a lesser extent in fruits and vegetables. Meatless diets show concurrent high reductions in the carbon footprint of −42% for vegetarians and −67% for vegan. A key obstacle to healthier and more environmentally sustainable eating is that people do not recognize the high nutritional and environmental co benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets. This suggests that policies promoting healthy eating can target factors affecting intentions, while measures targeting environmentally sustainable eating should aim at overcoming the intention behavior gap, by informing on e.g. the importance of reducing meat consumption toward environmental sustainability.
A survey of 620 Swiss households was conducted to investigate the determinants of purchases of organic fruits and vegetables and identify subjectively perceived requirements for more environmentally ...friendly and healthier food consumption. An integrative behavior model incorporating various psychological and socio-structural variables was applied to explain the ratio of organic vs. non-organic purchases. The theory of planned behavior was considered fundamental for the development of this integrative model, and supplementary variables were included, accounting for moral justifications, education level, income, and further aspects. The resulting model accounted for 42% of the variance of organic food consumption. Financial and environmental justifications for purchasing non-organic food resulted as the most important predictors, followed by recent consumption changes, health-related aspects of attitudes and social norms, perceived behavioral control, environmental values, income, and education level. The participants considered more knowledge and information and having more money at their disposal to be important requirements for achieving more environmentally friendly and healthier food consumption. Furthermore, they considered having more time to prepare meals oneself as particularly important to achieving healthier food consumption.
The sustainable use of common-pool resources depends on users’ behaviour with regards to appropriation and provision. Most knowledge about behaviour in such situations comes from experimental ...research. As experiments take place in confined environments, motivational drivers and actions in the field might differ. This paper analyses farmers’ use of common property pastures in Grindelwald, Switzerland. Binary logistic regression is applied to survey data to explore the effect of farmers’ attributes on livestock endowment, appropriation and provision behaviour. Furthermore, Q methodology is used to assess the impact of broader contextual variables on the sustainability of common property pastures. It is shown that the strongest associations exist between (a) socio-economic attributes and change in livestock endowment; (b) norms and appropriation behaviour; and (c) area and pay-off and provision behaviour. Relevant contextual variables are the economic value of the resource units, off-farm income opportunities, and the subsidy structure. We conclude that with increasing farm size farmers reduce the use and maintenance of common property. Additionally, we postulate that readiness to maintain a resource increases with appropriation activities and the net returns generated from appropriation.
Milk production in Malawi is stagnating although neighbouring countries steadily increase outputs. In this paper, we explored the determinants of the performance of dairy smallholders. As indicators ...of on-farm performance we used annual milk yield, calving intervals, and annual dairy income. Regression models revealed that milk yield was negatively related with farmer’s age, female farmer, and household size, but positively influenced by farmers’ experience. Calving intervals were strongly associated with labour costs and breeding method. Income from dairying was only associated with farmers’ education but varied strongly with region. Regional effects existed for all performance indicators which may partly be rooted in land scarcity in the south and the efforts of development agencies to promote dairying in the northern and central regions. Results also revealed a tendency for pure breeds to produce higher outputs, but crossbreeds due to lower costs provided better income. Thus, we recommend that experienced farmers become involved in extension programs to provide comprehensive services that help farmers make more efficient use of their scarce assets, and thus realise more of the animals’ genetic potential with regard to the three observed performance indicators.
Evaluations of agri-environment support at the European level are still rare. We used an expert survey to examine agricultural support schemes in the EU, Norway and Switzerland in terms of the shares ...of the payments that compensate farmers and other recipients for the costs of providing services. Furthermore, we explored to which categories of ecosystem services the funding for agri-environment measures contributed according to the experts. For the agri-environment payments in the EU we found a mean estimate of ‘percent payment for services’ (PPS) of 72.3%. Expert age, type of organisation and disciplinary background systematically affected the individual estimates. Controlling the individual-level variation, the estimates differed significantly by measure objectives. Particularly high PPS estimates were found for organic farming and conservation related measures, while integrated production and more generic extensive management options were perceived to perform less well. The mean PPS estimate for the rural development programmes was 59.6% and that for single payments 16.8%. The results suggest that expert estimates of PPS may complement the evaluation of schemes at the national or regional level in cases where complex policy objectives prevent a comprehensive evaluation based on objective measures.
•We use an expert survey to examine the performance of agricultural support.•We distinguish between payments for services and transfer payments.•We report estimated percent payment for services for different policy measures.•The estimates were determined by characteristics of experts and policy measures.•Expert assessments may complement evaluations based on objective measures.
In agriculture, a rising number of sustainability assessments are available that also comprise financial ratios. In a literature review of farm management textbooks, taking account of the differences ...between European and North American practices and considering prevalent sustainability assessment approaches, we identified frequently used financial ratios. Five ratios relate to the indicator profitability and four to the indicator liquidity. Another eight financial indicators refer to the indicators financial efficiency, stability, solvency and repayment capacity. Based on more than 14,000 accountancies of dairy farms from the Swiss Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), we carried out a Spearman correlation analysis for normalised and harmonised financial ratios. The correlation analysis revealed mostly positive correlations. To assess the implementation of a quantitative economic sustainability assessment we compare an aggregated indicator compound of all 17 ratios with two selections of financial ratios–first, a compound European and, second, a compound North American economic sustainability indicator. The correlation between the complete and the reduced sets of indicators suggest that both aggregate economic indicators can be reasonably applied to estimate the economic sustainability for Swiss dairy farms.
Farmers are key actors in land management confronted with society’s increasing demand for public goods. Understanding farmers’ values and motivations is essential to policy makers to foster more ...sustainable production practices. So far, no definite value profile for European farmers exists. Based on Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, we statistically analyzed six rounds of the European Social Survey to explore farmers’ value orientations in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Our results revealed that farmers are less open to change and instead more conservative in their value orientation than the general population. Comparison of value orientations across farmers showed that this value profile is particularly pronounced for Austrian, Finnish, and German farmers. Furthermore, there is a slight tendency for farmers to be less motivated by self-interest and instead more concerned with common welfare than the general population, but this observation needs further validation. Based on these value profiles, we argue that agri-environmental schemes will receive better acceptance when they represent a long-term modification of existing schemes, when they do not trade off commodity production, and when they provide benefits to society. Compensation for income losses resulting from reduced on-farm output appears to be an ineffective incentive.
•We analyze farmers’ psychological disposition in seven European countries using Schwartz model of basic human values.•We find that farmers are clearly more conservative in nature and less open to change than the general population.•We find tendencies that farmers hold stronger pro-social values and to be potentially less motivated by self-interest.•Comparing farmers, we find that typical farmer profile is most pronounced in Austrian; German, and Finish farmers.•Based on the observed value profile, we propose avenues to better align agri-environmental measures with farmers values.
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