effectiveness) found that an auction approach gave better outcomes at a lower cost( Rolfe & Windle, 2009). Although widely used, the scorecard approach has a number of weaknesses: i) scorecard favours those who already have good practices so discriminates against those looking to move from poor to good practices; ii) scorecard takes account of other factors beyond cost effectiveness of delivering environmental outcomes; and iii) scorecard outcomes affected by subjective decisions on weighting of different factors and score standardization( Rolfe & Windle, 2009).
D. 3
D. 3.1
Evaluation of success of specific programs
Success in improving adoption of improved land management practices
Three studies were identified that considered the effectiveness of the Grazing BMP program at encouraging grazing practice change. Whilst all three studies found the program to be effective, the effectiveness rates differed greatly across the studies.
The impact of the Grazing BMP program on behavior was evaluated with a before / after approach to determine whether participants intended to make changes to their land management or indeed had actually made positive changes in( Moravek, Nelson, Anderson, & Reid, 2017) and a variant on the without / without approach to determine whether those who had made changes had been involved in the program. Moravek et al.( 2017) found 78 % of participants had made changes to their farming practices in some way, and 51 % had made changes to their grazing land management practices. Of those graziers who had made a change in their grazing land management practices, analysis revealed they were significantly more likely to have interacted with extension( attended a workshop and / or participated in one on one) during that year or previously, indicating a relationship between extension activity and practice change adoption and suggesting maybe a time lag between extension activity and adoption. No significant difference was found in impact of different types of extension, comparing workshops attendance and / or one on one sessions.
The impact of Grazing BMP on encouraging adoption was also assessed by Long( 2015) who found that the program had been highly successful in changing behaviours. In a before / after study, where 69 graziers( 28 within the Burdekin) involved in the program were surveyed, it was reported that 97 % had made at least one practice change following Grazing BMP participation, 86 % were planning at least one change, 77 % had sought additional advice regarding a potential change and 68 % had requested additional training. Furthermore, the study reported that 94 % of participants would recommend Grazing BMP to other graziers and 86 % indicated they would complete a Grazing BMP reassessment. 80 % of the graziers reported that their participation in Grazing BMP was to improve their management practices and thus were already motivated to make changes; the study made no attempt to assess the additionality of the program. The effectiveness of Grazing BMP workshops on behavior change was also assessed by eliciting participant views( from 70 participants across 13 workshops) on the completion of the workshop. The study found that 95 % of participants had plans to make changes and or review their action plan( where they had identified changes); and thus concluded that this was clear evidence that workshop participants were prompted to review their business, plan changes and implement the changes. However, this
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