Funded by NERC, the SPF Landscape Decisions Programme funds a number of projects to develop landscape decision models, that have the potential to provide useful evidence or act as tools for farmer decision-making. CCRI received funding from this programme to organise and convene a commissioned workshop and complete a report, with the objective to produce guidance on what we need to do in the future to make available evidence from landscape decision models usable for farmers and others making decisions on the ground.
The project focuses on farmers and farm advisors as key, yet often under researched, actors in the context of efforts to implement landscape solutions to the climate and biodiversity emergencies. It is important to better understand how the evidence provided by these models, or the tools themselves, can better support farmers’ and their advisors’ decision-making. Exploring how and why this group make land-use decisions, and how such behaviours can be influenced, is vital in the context of ambitious and fast shifting policy goals in these areas
The findings from this project suggest that factors identified by Rose et al. (2016), in
agreement with previous and subsequent evidence, are also significant within the e-DST
context. The most influential factors determining e-DST uptake were identified as
performance expectancy, ease of use, peer recommendation, cost, habit, age, IT education
and compliance.
The report concludes with eleven recommendations that provide guidance to ensure that
evidence from e-DSTs is usable for farmers, their advisors and other decision makers. Further details are available, in full, in the Final Report.
The project, involving Dr Julie Urquhart, Dr Nenia Micha and Alice Goodenough, was completed in January 2023.
CCRI Ref: 2021-111
