2.3 Who needs to change?
There are 71 properties in the BBB catchments, and 63 grazing businesses operating under a range of ownership structures. Five are owned by mining companies and two are owned by Government. The remainder are a mix of family managed through to agricultural businesses. Tenure of these properties is dominated by leasehold land( 73 %) with around 16 % owned as freehold land( Waterhouse et al., 2017). There are also National Parks and State Forests as well as several large mining operations in the BBB including four coal mining operations and one operating gold mine. It is estimated that there are also up to 119 abandoned mines. The focus of this study is incentives for grazing land managers.
2.4 What factors influence adoption?
There have been a number of studies investigating factors that group graziers into type in the GBR and the BBB( Bohnet, Harding, Haug, & Roberts, 2007; Bohnet, Roberts, Harding, & Haug, 2011) influence adoption of improved land management broadly and for graziers and other land managers in GBR catchments. Key messages from these studies are summarised below. The full discussion of factors that influence adoption of land management practices generally and for the GBR and BBB in particular is provided in APPENDIX B. Based on the literature and insights from the LDC design process, key factors that influence adoption of improved land management practices in the GBR and Burdekin can be discussed in the categories of financial and intrinsic motivations, type of change required, attitude to risk and uncertainty and incentive scheme design. Each is discussed in Table 2
Table 2 What does the literature and landholders say influence adoption of practice change?
Motivator Finance
Intrinsic motivations
Fit with current practices
Description and experience from the literature
Landholders with strong financial and economic drivers stated that they are unlikely to adopt conservation practices unless there are clear financial incentives( Greiner, 2015; Rolfe & Gregg, 2015).
Greiner and Lankester( 2007) highlights that farm debt is an indirect driver of intensification and slow take up of practices to de-intensify. This is because graziers need to generate sufficient income to cover interest and principal repayments through good and bad years. The need for fixed payments can prevent early and adequate de-stocking in drought years and motivates short term maximization of production.
Whilst finances are important, landholders who are conservation orientated are not completely driven by financial motivations( Greiner, 2015; Rolfe & Gregg, 2015). Conservation motivation for this type of landholder tends to be intrinsic( they enjoy a sense of personal pride from their well-managed land, they enjoy the environmental benefits of good land management, they aim to leave their land in good condition for the next generation etc.).
Greiner and Gregg( 2011) note that conservation management not fitting with current practices and / or not fitting with goals presented a significant barrier to adoption( conservation and lifestyle motivation results in greater adoption of conservation practices).
It has been found that when new practices do not flow naturally from current, financial support becomes a larger driver for motivation. In the context of sediment management, this was found in cases where outcomes required riparian fencing and watering points( Januchowski-Hartley, Moon, Stoeckl, & Gray, 2012).
16 | Landholders driving change: Exploring new incentives