| dc.description.abstracteng | The conversion of biologically rich areas into agricultural land undermines the capacity of these lands to sustain and maintain vital ecosystem functions. This is mostly the case when the conversion includes the simplification to a monoculture system such as that of oil palm. Oil palm grows best in tropical humid areas where the most biodiverse forests are located, which can threaten local biodiversity and natural ecosystems. At the same time, oil palm represents an economic opportunity for the local community. Today, globally, oil palm is the most important and productive vegetable oil, grown on more than 13.5 million hectares of tropical areas. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of this oil and houses rainforests and rich biodiversity. Recognizing these economic benefits and the environmental externalities, there is a need for policies that reconcile trade-offs of growing oil palm. This is particularly urgent in Indonesia, since the country plays a crucial role in mitigating global warming. Furthermore, the expansion of oil palm in the country is expected to continue as the national government envisages large investments in the oil palm sector and adoption of the crop is rapidly increasing among smallholder farmers.
Given the economic gains associated with high return-to-labour, adoption of oil palm is multiplying among smallholder farmers. Often, these farmers have production systems that support biodiversity and related ecosystem functions, or retain remnant forest in their oil palm plantations. These remnant forests are valuable habitat for biodiversity. Indonesian oil palm farmers therefore have an important role in restoring or maintaining biodiversity. Policies that foster pro-environmental behaviors by adopting biodiversity-friendly practices in oil palm plantations are urgently needed. Such policies can draw on social-psychological theories, which argue that behavioral change is influenced by cognitive processes that involve intrinsic factors such as perceptions and intentions. These factors are less examined in the context of agricultural innovation adoption.
This dissertation contributes to this gap by analyzing the connection between perceptions, intentions, and actions taken, based on the case of Indonesian oil palm farmers. Specifically, we address four research objectives. First, we analyze farmers’ perception of changes in ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations, and their respective subjective valuation. Second, we explore factors that are correlated to the farmers’ environmental concerns. Third, we investigate the causal effects of two environmental policies on tree planting behavior. Lastly, we explore mediation pathways that explain how the provision of information and the combination of information with delivery of free seedlings can increase the adoption of tree planting through changes in the perceptions and intentions a person holds.
The present dissertation consisting of four chapters is organized as follows. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the context in which the dissertation was conducted. It provides a background on the current environmental global challenges caused by land use change and outlines the research gaps and objective of this dissertation.
Chapter 2 addresses the first and second research questions. Drawing on environmental psychology studies, I provide a descriptive analysis on oil palm farmers’ perceptions on the change of ecosystem functions in oil palm cultivation and explore factors that shape farmers’ concern for the environment. I employ 5-point Likert scales to construct these psychological measures and use a multivariate probit and an ordinary least-squares model to perform the econometric analysis. I start by exploring farmers’ perceptions towards these ecosystem functions in oil palm, and then link these perceptions to observe the relationship with the construct of environmental concern, and finally, I examine factors that influence environmental concern of oil palm smallholders. The empirical analysis provides evidence that farmers value and perceive a decrease on water and soil-related ecosystem functions. At the same time, farmers perceive an increase on provisioning services which is linked to the economic gains for cultivating oil palm. Our analysis further indicates that the perceived increase of provisioning services might outweigh farmers’ ecological motives to conserve areas with high biodiversity value.
Chapter 3 provides experimental evidence from a randomized controlled trial to evaluate two environmental policies to promote the adoption of tree planting in oil palm cultivation. The policies address knowledge gaps by disseminating information about this practice through a movie and an illustrative manual, and addresses structural constraints by distributing seedlings for free in addition to information. We focus on three outcomes: changes in perceptions of the ecosystem regarding oil palm, the intention to plant, and actual adoption. I estimate intent-to-treat effects and conduct a path analysis on psychological components to understand the mediating channels through which the interventions influence the adoption of tree planting. We find that both interventions have a positive and significant effect on changing perceptions, intentions, and the actual adoption of tree planting. The results of the path analysis suggest that perceptions and intention fully explain the effect of information dissemination, while partially explaining the effect of the combination of information and delivery of seedlings.
Chapter 4 presents and summarizes the findings on the previous chapters to draw feasible policy implications and outlines the main limitations of this study. It also suggests future research directions. | de |