Evaluating water quality regulation as a driver of farmer behavior: a social-ecological systems approach

Wagner, Courtney Hammond; Greenhalgh, Suzie; Niles, Meredith T.; Zia, Asim; Bowden, William B.

doi:10.5751/es-12034-250435

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…In this paper we illustrate the challenges of largescale environmental dilemmas by looking at research on agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution. NPS features multiple types of complexity that make collective action difficult but also necessary; and it has been the focus of a limited amount of CPR research where theorizing the role of collective action has proven difficult (Lubell 2004;Sarker et al 2008;Smith & Porter 2010;Patterson et al 2013;Patterson et al 2017;Yoder 2019;Hammond-Wagner et al 2020). NPS pollution results from spatially diffuse erosion, runoff, and leaching of phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers into water bodies, making it difficult to monitor and to attribute relative responsibility to any particular farmers for downstream water quality degradation, such as harmful algal blooms or hypoxic zones (Robertson & Vitousek 2009;Shortle & Horan 2013).…”

Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compounding this challenge is that effects from changes in farm management to mitigate water quality may take as long as 25 years to detect (Melland et al 2018). Intense disagreements (Hammond Wagner et al 2020), disbelief (Yoder & Roy Chowdhury 2018), and partial or noncompliance (Barnes et al 2013) are among farmers' responses to government interventions to compel farm management changes.…”

Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interventions that lead to widespread resistance can lead to prohibitively costly monitoring and enforcement (Shortle & Abler 2001). In the United States, there is ample evidence to point towards the complications of social and political opposition to regulatory fixes for NPS pollution: the major water law in the United States, the Clean Water Act, exempts agricultural drainage from regulation (Houck 2003); in countries with regulations, compliance levels vary significantly (MacGregor & Warren 2006;Barnes et al 2013); skepticism of the scientific basis for regulations runs deep (Duncan 2016;Yoder & Roy Chowdhury 2018); and farmers have been forced to dramatically change their production systems to meet strict compliance standards, leading to extensive frustration (Hammond Wagner et al 2020) or legislative reversals of strict approaches (Drevno 2016). Finally, the scale and breadth of many of today's environmental challenges make it nearly impossible to monitor and penalize behavior in a way that regulations alone can sustain.…”

Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Burton and Paragahawewa (2011) have argued that, in promoting solutions, policies need to recognize and tap into what land managers value, such as the positive reputational benefits from demonstrating their skills in pro-environmental management. For example, rule specifications, while aiming to achieve the same outcome, may grant actors more or less agency in manner of compliance, as is the case of prescriptive, practicebased rules for NPS pollution as compared to more flexible, performance-based rules that allow actors to choose their actions to achieve compliance (Hammond Wagner et al, 2020). Social expectations can also factor into sustaining compliance through time.…”

Section: Reflection 4 Resolving Salience Participation and Compliance...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This marks a shift in focus from applying diagnostic tools to building theoretical understanding. In this sense, our argument is similar to others that have been made already (Steins & Edwards 1999;Johnson 2004;Cleaver 2012), and in practice there are many ongoing theory-building efforts in the commons literature (c.f., Clement 2010; Poteete et al 2010;Fleischmann et al 2014;Andersson et al 2014;Baggio et al 2016;Orazgaliyev & Araral 2019;Niemiec et al 2020;Olivier & Schlager 2021), including many studies using the SES framework (c.f., Epstein et al 2014;Cox 2014;Hammond Wagner et al 2020;Wang et al 2020) and others building on critical institutionalism (Cleaver & de Koning 2015).…”

Section: Introduction: the Relevance Of Collective Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory

Yoder

Wagner

Sullivan-Wiley

et al. 2022

International Journal of the Commons

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It has become axiomatic that collective action is core to overcoming commons dilemmas. However, the popularity of the commons dilemma framing has led to its decoupling from canonical common-pool-resource cases. This decoupling is especially problematic for theorizing under what conditions collective action would emerge to solve complex, large-scale environmental problems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or ocean hypoxia. We argue that there is an over-emphasis on using diagnostic tools (e.g., the design principles), which has come at the expense of theory building for non-canonical cases. Canonical cases, such as fisheries, forests, or irrigation networks, rely on situations where salience of social dilemmas arises from joint costs and benefits actors face from allocating and sustaining a shared pool of livelihood-dependent resources. By expanding the commons definition to more generally mean shared needs or benefits, such as ecosystem services, the consequences of uses in large-scale CPRs, such as pollution, become less obvious. In this paper, we argue that it is particularly urgent to generate a revised theory of collective action for these types of cases, where environmental bads are core to the social dilemma. We contend that Ostrom's design principles represent a particular set of solutions to several interconnected and foundational aspects of group problem-solving: generating salience, achieving widespread participation, and ensuring compliance over time. We argue that reconceptualizing how particular institutional arrangements address salience, participation, and compliance can expand CPR theory's applicability to these large-scale problems and help to clarify the role that collective action can play in solving these pressing challenges.

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Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reflection 1: Collective Action Remains An Essential Pathway...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reflection 4 Resolving Salience Participation and Compliance...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: the Relevance Of Collective Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory

Yoder

Wagner

Sullivan-Wiley

et al. 2022

International Journal of the Commons

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Does labor out‐migration affect the sustainability of disaster mitigation? Insight from the social–ecological system perspective

et al. 2023

Sustainable Development

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Much is known about disaster mitigation (DM) actions, but little is known about the impact of migration as an exogenous shock. Rural farmers in mountainous areas are under the pressure of poverty, and also face the threat of geo‐hazards. Therefore, a more complex relationship exists between rural farmers' willingness to out‐migration for work and their DM behavior. To gain insight into the relationship between the two, we constructed the social–ecological system (SES) framework based on the survey data of 864 households in 53 villages in Chongqing, and verified our findings using the endogenous switching regression model and the mediation effect model. The results show that labor out‐migration has a negative correlation with the DM behavior of peasant households. When the total effect is further categorized into the direct effect and mediation effect; the negative total effect of labor out‐migration on the DM of farmers changes from a significant to an insignificant negative direct effect. It can be seen that labor out‐migration is not the direct cause of low motivation for DM, but the loss of leadership caused by labor out‐migration, the dilution of farmers' sense of place, and the decline of farmers' risk perception are the causes that ultimately lead to the decline of farmers' action ability for DM. This study confirms that the SES framework is suitable for empirical research on how labor out‐migration affects the ability of local villages to ensure DM action. These findings add new theoretical insights to the literature on DM.

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Diversified grain rotations can be highly and reliably productive in unstable climates

Ewing,

Chim,

Lehman

et al. 2024

Field Crops Research

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Evaluating water quality regulation as a driver of farmer behavior: a social-ecological systems approach

Cited by 3 publications

References 30 publications

The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory

The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory

Does labor out‐migration affect the sustainability of disaster mitigation? Insight from the social–ecological system perspective

Diversified grain rotations can be highly and reliably productive in unstable climates

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