Kristin Floress

Determinants of agricultural best management practice adoption: Evidence from the literature

This article reviews 25 years of literature focused on the adoption of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) in the United States to examine general trends in the categories of capacity, awareness, attitudes and farm characteristics. The study uses a vote count methodology and counts every instance of positive, negative and insignificant relationships in 55 studies. Education levels, capital, income, farm size, access to information, positive environmental attitudes, environmental awareness, and utilization of social networks emerge as some of the variables that are more often positively, rather than negatively, associated with adoption rates. The type of statistical analysis used in the studies has a negligible effect on the results. When different types of BMPs are examined in similar groupings, the aggregated findings generally hold true. The study concludes that farmer adoption rates can be improved by focusing on the generally consistent determinants of agricultural BMP adoption. This paper also highlights future areas of research that are needed including a focus on the determinants of adoption of water and livestock management BMPs and more study of the role of tenure and farm proximity to a river or stream.

Why farmers adopt best management practice in the United States: A meta-analysis of the adoption literature

This meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies assesses factors believed to influence adoption of agricultural Best Management Practices in the United States. Using an established statistical technique to summarize the adoption literature in the United States, we identified the following variables as having the largest impact on adoption: access to and quality of information, financial capacity, and being connected to agency or local networks of farmers or watershed groups. This study shows that various approaches to data collection affect the results and comparability of adoption studies. In particular, environmental awareness and farmer attitudes have been inconsistently used and measured across the literature. This meta-analysis concludes with suggestions regarding the future direction of adoption studies, along with guidelines for how data should be presented to enhance the adoption of conservation practices and guide research.

It's Who You Know: Social Capital, Social Networks, and Watershed Groups

Social capital, usually conceptualized as trusting relationships among members of a group, is often discussed as playing an important role in watershed groups. This study is grounded in the social networks conceptualization of social capital and seeks to identify how access to social resources aids in achieving watershed group outcomes. Three comparative cases along a rural–urban continuum in the Midwest were studied using qualitative in-depth interviews (n = 38) and meeting observation. The major finding of this research is that purposive selection of watershed-group participants to provide the greatest access to human capital and social network ties aids watershed groups in achieving outcomes. Guidance provided by state agencies to newly formed watershed groups should include suggestions for what types of network ties might be most beneficial for different objectives and how such ties can be sought out.

A Typology of Catalyst Events for Collaborative Watershed Management in the United States

While much has been written about the benefits of collaborative watershed management to address nonpoint source pollution and other water quality concerns in the United States, few scholars have addressed the catalytic nature of events that generate these collective action responses. Further, because equivalent catalyst events in different communities do not always lead to collective action, it is critical to understand the interaction between a communitys baseline conditions and the catalyst events that lead to collective action. This article presents a conceptual framework that illustrates the relationship between baseline conditions and events that lead to collective action. In this article a theoretical typology of catalyst events is presented that includes both intentional and nonintentional types of events. Understanding these types of catalyst events can help water quality advocates create and/or seize opportunities to nurture a collective action. This article concludes with a call for future research into catalyst events.

The quality of greenways planning in northwest Indiana: a focus on sustainability principles

Although the development of greenways is an increasingly popular trend, little research has focused on evaluating plans to determine how well they address sustainability principles. For this study, the authors completed a qualitative analysis of 32 plans, and a quantitative analysis of 27 plans from jurisdictions in northwest Indiana that address greenways and open space. Evaluations were based upon an established system to evaluate sustainability that the researchers modified for greenways. Plans are ranked based upon their quality and a qualitative analysis and description of each ranking are provided. Results from an ordered logit model show that the most significant determinants of plan-rank in relation to greenways are the population size of the planning jurisdiction, ratio of the population that is white, and population residing in the same house for five or more years. A spatial analysis of plan-rank reveals that there is no clustering of highly ranked plans.

A Method for Incorporating Community Priorities into GIS: Challenges, Choices, and Directions for Landscape Planners

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) have demonstrated the potential for GIS to engage the public in collaborative efforts to address community problems. While most PPGIS approaches emphasize taking GIS out to the community, the approach described in this paper uses GIS to support the inclusion of community priorities in the landscape planning process through off-site analysis. The case study outlines a four-phase method for collecting place-specific information about community goals during a participatory planning forum and subsequently using GIS to identify spatial distribution of goal priorities for the Wabash River corridor in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. The discussion section focuses on lessons learned during this research and possible directions for improving the use of GIS to incorporate public priorities into landscape planning efforts.

Measuring the Citizen Effect: What Does Good Citizen Involvement Look Like?

Measuring the quality of citizen participation in watershed projects provides a way to track and evaluate citizen involvement over time. Technical watershed specialists and citizen groups can use indicators of citizen participation to adapt their processes to achieve the kinds of citizen involvement most appropriate to the project phase as well provide accountable documentation to funding sources.

An exploration of place meanings among residents in central Wisconsin

Abstract A mail survey of all residents in the surface and ground watersheds of an 11 lake area in central Wisconsin was conducted in 2012 to assess the behaviors, attitudes, awareness of issues, and attachment to lakes to incorporate social information into lake management. Place attachment is a complex concept composed of many dimensions to describe an individuals relationship to a place. This study tested the dimensional structure, validity, and transferability of a previously developed place meanings scale. The factors were then further tested to see if any differences existed among type of ownership (lakefront property owners versus non-lakefront property owners), involvement in lake groups, and seasonal residency in the level of meanings assigned to the lakes. Significant differences were found among type of ownership, involvement in lake groups, and seasonal residency on several place meaning domains. The dimensional scale structure revealed through this study differed somewhat from the original place meanings scale being tested, although the overall consistency on a new population has provided evidence for the transferability of place meanings scales in similar settings. Implications for management include the need to develop targeted outreach plans based on what is valued by residents instead of relying only on lake-by-lake segmentation.