Content uploaded by Melissa Marselle
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Melissa Marselle on Apr 15, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Melissa Marselle
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Melissa Marselle on Apr 15, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
Available online 29 March 2024
0264-8377/© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc/4.0/).
Exploring the motivation and challenges for land-users engaged in
sustainable grazing in Europe
Julia Rouet-Leduc
a
,
b
,
f
,
*
, Fons van der Plas
d
,
f
, Aletta Bonn
b
,
c
,
e
, Wouter Helmer
i
, Melissa
R. Marselle
b
,
c
,
g
, Erica von Essen
a
,
h
, Guy Pe’er
b
,
c
a
Stockholm Resilience Centre – Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
b
German Centre for integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
c
Department of Ecosystem Services, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research- UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
d
Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, AA Wageningen 6700, the Netherlands
e
Institute of Biodiversity, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
f
Systematic Botany and Functional Biodiversity, Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Leipzig 04103, Germany
g
Environmental Psychology Research Group, School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK
h
The Faculty of Applied Ecology, Agricultural Sciences and Biotechnology at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Evenstad, Norway
i
Rewilding Europe
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Behaviour Change Wheel
Grasslands
Grazing
Rewilding
Land management
Sustainable farming
ABSTRACT
Grazing of both domestic and wild large herbivores can contribute to multiple ecosystem services. However,
grazing systems strongly differ in the intensity of management and outcomes, and we dene sustainable grazing
as grazing which benets multiple environmental ecosystem services. Previous studies have found that, in
general, grazing systems with relatively low densities of animals, and with minimal and only targeted applica-
tions of deworming and other medicinal treatments, are most sustainable. However, for people engaged in such
grazing management, a key question is what are their challenges and motivation.
We conducted interviews with 74 land-users, who are engaged in sustainable grazing management, in eight
case-study areas in Europe. Employing the capability, opportunity and motivation-behaviour model (COM-B), we
identied key motivation factors driving sustainable grazing management and the challenges which these land-
users face. We found that capability and opportunity linked to land abandonment and rural exodus impact upon
land-users’ management, especially in parts of South and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, challenges linked to the
environment were particularly important in remote areas. In addition, we found economic aspects to be
important in driving land-users’ behaviour, especially scal measures of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Moreover, our results indicate that engagement in sustainable grazing management is often intrinsically moti-
vated by the interest in nature conservation, intergenerational continuity and cohesion in the rural community.
Based on these results, using the Behaviour Change Wheel, we identify key interventions that could facilitate
and encourage the capabilities and opportunities to conduct sustainable grazing management. These include
incentivising extensication using subsidies, developing direct market possibilities and removing administrative
hurdles for practises related to very extensive and semi-wild grazing.
1. Introduction
Grazing by large ungulate herbivores, whether they are wild or do-
mestic, is important in shaping the landscapes of Europe, especially
grasslands. While it is crucial for maintaining some key ecosystem ser-
vices (i.e benets provided by ecosystems such as habitat for biodiver-
sity and cultural services.), in certain cases, grazing can be harmful to
the environment (Garnett et al., 2017), for example, in the case of
intensive grazing practices that lead to overgrazing. Grazing manage-
ment in Europe has undergone two parallel processes in recent decades.
First, there is the intensication of grassland management, characterised
by an enhancement of production through increasing input (e.g. fertil-
isers). It is not only driven by economic pressures, but also due to sup-
port through the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (Navarro and
* Corresponding author at: German Centre for integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
E-mail address: julia.rouet.leduc@su.se (J. Rouet-Leduc).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Land Use Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107146
Received 14 December 2022; Received in revised form 12 March 2024; Accepted 13 March 2024
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
2
L´
opez-Bao, 2019; Pe’er et al., 2020; Scown et al., 2020). This intensi-
cation is largely considered environmentally-detrimental (Humbert
et al., 2021; Manning et al., 2015; Rouet-Leduc et al., 2021). It nega-
tively affects plant biodiversity (Olff and Ritchie, 1998; Koerner et al.,
2018), insect (Takagi and Miyashita, 2014; van Klink et al., 2015) and
bird (Rigal et al., 2023) diversity, and is associated with high green-
house gas emissions and nutrient leaching (Bellarby et al., 2013;
Nystr¨
om et al., 2019). Second, socioeconomic factors have led to (land)
abandonment of many grasslands which were traditionally used as
pastures or meadows. This abandonment is characterised by a gradual
decrease in agricultural activities, with there sometimes being large
areas where agricultural activities have stopped (Moreira et al., 2011).
As extensive grazing is integral for maintaining the provision of multiple
ecosystem services in the countryside (Ryschawy et al., 2019), main-
taining and encouraging it is important. In addition to providing meat
and dairy products, grazing has the potential to maintain a habitat for
biodiversity (Olff and Ritchie, 1998; van Klink et al., 2015), to reduce
wildre risks and impacts (Rouet-Leduc et al., 2021) and to provide
numerous cultural ecosystem services for people (Plieninger et al.,
2015). However, this pre-supposes that such grazing is done in an
environmentally-sustainable way, for example, through very
low-intensity grazing practices, or minimal use of parasiticide medicine
(Floate et al., 2005; Verdú et al., 2018). In addition, sustainable man-
agement of large herbivores helps to create heterogeneity in the land-
scape (Fuhlendorf et al., 2006; Gonz´
alez-Hern´
andez et al., 2020) and
increases biodiversity. We therefore dene sustainable grazing as a set of
practices (e.g. low-density grazing or rotational grazing, with no or only
very limited inputs of external feeds, articial fertilisers deworming
medication; Teague and Kreuter, 2020) that contributes to multiple
ecosystem services such as soil health or biodiversity. It also
pre-supposes that land-users are equally equipped, willing, and cogni-
zant of requirements to make the shift to extensive grazing and to
manage it in a sustainable way. We acknowledge the existence of mul-
tiple denitions of sustainability (Thompson, 2007) such as resource
sufciency (Jungell-Michelsson and Heikkurinen, 2022) and regenera-
tive sustainability (Buckton et al., 2023). However, here we choose to
identify sustainability as contributing to multiple ecosystem services
since it provides a framework to integrate multiple aspects of sustain-
ability while seeing grazing systems as complex socio-ecological systems
(DeClerck et al., 2016). While it is clear that sustainable grazing man-
agement has multiple benets, the ongoing land-use trends in Europe -
still moving away from it - raise a fundamental question regarding the
factors that motivate land-users to manage grazing areas in a sustainable
way, and what barriers they experience.
Previous studies looking at land-users’ and farmers behaviours
conducting sustainable management found that they were inuenced by
contextual factors, such as nancial resources (Kabii and Horwitz,
2006), social environment (Burton, 2004), physical capacity, and
infrastructure (Belknap and Saupe, 1988; Dwyer et al., 2007), as well as
environmental and biogeographical conditions (Wilson and Hart, 2001).
Equally, psychological capacity, which comprises knowledge, and ac-
cess to information and education (McDowell and Sparks, 1989, Wilson,
1997), may also determine one’s ability to implement sustainable
grazing management. Beliefs and attitudes are additional important
drivers of behaviours (Lynne et al., 1988; Baumgart-Getz et al., 2012) as
well as collaboration between different farmers and collaboration with
other stakeholders, for example in maintaining grasslands (Couvreur
et al., 2019; Petit et al., 2019, 2022). However, we lack a comprehensive
understanding of the different factors (interactively) inuencing land--
users’ sustainable grazing management, and how they could be
addressed by interventions such as policy changes.
In this study, and against this background, we applied the Behaviour
Change Wheel (BCW; Michie et al., 2011; 2014) to further understand
the behaviour of land-users who are involved in sustainable grazing
management. We then address potential behaviour-change intervention
functions to target the identied COM-B factors in the discussion.
According to the COM-B model, behaviours (B) are inuenced by
(i) Capability (C, the psychological and physical ability to engage in
the target behaviour)
(ii) Opportunity (O, aspects of the physical and social environment
that enable or hinder the target behaviour), and
(iii) Motivation (M, the mental processes that activate or inhibit
behaviour).
Importantly, capability, opportunity, and motivation do not work in
isolation, but interact to inuence behaviour. Each COM aspect is
further subdivided into two sub-categories, resulting in six COM-B cat-
egories (see Supplementary table 1). Original denitions of each COM-B
subcategory are in Supplementary table 3, we also included additional
denitions and examples relating to sustainable grazing.
Synthesised from 19 different behaviour change models, the BCW is
an integrative model of behaviour change, providing a comprehensive
and systematic framework for designing behaviour-change in-
terventions (Michie et al., 2011). It does this by linking the factors
inuencing human behaviour to the development of interventions and
policies for promoting behavioural change. The BCW has three layers: at
the core is the ‘behaviour system’ or COM-B model (Capability, Op-
portunity, Motivation, Behaviour) which represents the key factors that
inuence any behaviour. The middle contains nine ‘intervention func-
tions’, which are activities aimed at changing behaviour by targeting the
identied COM-B factors. Lastly, the outer layer shows seven ‘policy
categories’ which are possible actions by the responsible authorities that
could help support the intervention functions (Michie et al., 2011).
Furthermore, the BCW identies links between the COM-B factors and
intervention functions most likely to be appropriate and effective for
bringing about the desired change, as well as the policy categories most
likely to support these interventions (Michie et al., 2011, 2014). These
linkages between the three layers of the BCW are to be used to direct
intervention designers to the optimum package of interventions and
policies to change the factors that inuence behaviour. In this way, the
three layers of the BCW are interlinked – specic intervention functions
are linked to COM-B factors, and specic policy categories are recom-
mended to target certain intervention functions (see Appendix). The
BCW can thereby be used to help:
1) Identify key challenges and factors of motivation to the target
behaviour via the ‘behavioural system’
2) Consider potential intervention functions to target these challenges
or facilitators, and
3) Determine the most appropriate policy areas in which to apply these
interventions.
So far, the COM-B has mostly been used for topics related to public
health (Alexander et al., 2014; Bentley et al., 2019), and has only
recently received attention in nature conservation and land manage-
ment contexts (e.g. pest management, Kropf et al., 2020 and pollination,
Marselle et al., 2021). We apply the COM-B model in this study because
engagement in sustainable grazing management involves a complex
interaction of all aspects relevant to the COM-B model, such as thought
processes, material challenges and opportunities (in the landscape), as
well as interpersonal relations and social norms (perceived informal
rules within a group or community) in relation to ideas of proper
conduct, continuity in the cultural landscape (Prokopy et al., 2019).
Together, these also enable an informed discussion about broader
change processes and values among land-users in relation to the land-
scape. We use the COM-B model of the BCW, in this way, not only to map
the behaviour factors of land-users, but also as a vehicle to develop
recommendations for policy and for driving societal transformations
towards sustainability.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
3
2. Methods
2.1. Positionality
The authors are researchers and practitioners located primarily in
Europe (Holmes, 2020). We position our work at the intersection of
social sciences and nature conservation practice. Authors in the group
have a diverse interdisciplinary background in sustainability science,
environmental psychology, environmental communication, ecology and
biology. The author group also beneted from the close collaboration
with practitioners working within the eld of nature conservation in an
NGO. The work of all authors is transdisciplinary in nature as we all aim
to bridge a gap between different disciplines as means to inform policy
and practitioners. We seek to shed light on what motivates land-users to
conduct sustainable grazing practices and we speak to various audiences
including researchers, policymakers, NGOs and land-users.
2.2. Participant selection and recruitment
We conducted this study as part of the EU-funded GrazeLIFE project
(https://grazelife.com), which aimed to improve implementation pos-
sibilities of different grazing models. The GrazeLIFE project had eight
case-study areas across Europe (Fig. 1). These were selected from among
the network of Rewilding Europe sites as based on covering a wide range
of geographic, social and cultural contexts in Europe. The case-study
areas cover various types of grazing management, both extensive graz-
ing by domestic, and semi-wild grazing, in rewilding projects, or other
traditional systems of animal-rearing (Supplementary table 2). Within
the GrazeLIFE project, we conducted 74 face-to-face interviews between
September 2019 and March 2021 (the relatively long timespan occurred
due to the COVID-19 pandemic). We used a purposive sampling tech-
nique and recruited participants in the interviews through stakeholder
workshops organised by Rewilding Europe and local partner organisa-
tions to Rewilding Europe. The interviews were with farmers, land-
owners, animal owners that were grazing them in common lands or
managers of a rewilding area where grazing with semi-wild herbivores
was used. They were practising extensive grazing, or what they
perceived as sustainable grazing management, either as a sole practice,
or alongside other grazing practices (including more intensive prac-
tices). We dene the participants as ‘land-users’ since they include not
only farmers, but also other people, e.g. NGO members, or herders, who
are engaged in such activities. We focus on land-users practising sus-
tainable grazing management regardless if they are productive livestock
systems or semi-wild grazing systems (i.e. with only very minimal grazer
management, i.e. for animal registration and often in unfenced areas)
practising conservation grazing through rewilding with large herbi-
vores. We chose to do so rather than to focus solely on productive
livestock systems, in order to be able to explore and compare grazing
systems that do not depend on a farm but still have the opportunity to
provide multiple ecosystem services. These include, e.g., grazing in
systems of Commons or with semi-wild herbivores. Considering the wide
range of land-users we interviewed in terms of both geographical scope
and grazing practices, the scope of this study was not to evaluate
whether the practice is sustainable or not - but rather to understand the
motivations of people who expressed themselves that they were con-
ducting sustainable grazing. Sustainability being a complex and multi-
dimensional concept, considering how land-users perceived their
practices was key to identifying what motivates their behaviour. We
collected informed consent prior to holding the interviews, by means of
a document which explained how the information from the interview
would be used and by whom. The participants received no nancial
compensation. The number of participants interviewed in each case-
study area was limited by the human resources available to conduct
the interviews in the project. The interview project description, as well
as the interview guide and consent form, were approved by the Ethics
department of the University of Leipzig in Germany.
2.3. Development of interview guide
For this study, we applied a qualitative interview approach to reach
our main research objective. The approach was to collect empirical
knowledge on land-users’ grazing management in an open way, to thus
Fig. 1. Overview of the case-study areas, abbreviation and number of participants.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
4
gain better understanding of the factors inuencing land-users to engage
in this management (Flick et al., 2004).
We based our semi-structured interview guide on key questions
which emerged from the GrazeLIFE project and previous literature
(Rouet-Leduc et al., 2021; Pe’er et al., 2021). The interview guide
consisted of four main sections:
1) Questions on the participants’ background and the nature of their
activities in relation to grazing management
2) The challenges of grazing management and potential human-wildlife
conicts and
3) Questions regarding factors potentially inuencing their behaviour
in relation to grazing management and how these were incentivised
We pilot-tested the interview guide with 11 land-users in three
countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Spain). Based on this, we revised the
interview guide prior to its implementation in all the case-studies to
make the questions more concise through reformulation of the
questions.
2.4. Data collection
Local partners in each case-study area conducted the interviews. To
ensure consistency, only one interviewer conducted all the semi-
structured interviews within a case-study region. This also facilitated
trust with interviewees and familiarisation with the area. To ensure
consistency across interviewers and case-studies, meetings were ar-
ranged between the authors and the partners conducting the interviews
to practice the interview process and maintain consistency across the
different case studies. The authors also had debrieng meetings with the
local partners to discuss experiences and challenges as well as to clarify
some of the interview transcripts in regards to concepts and translations.
All the interviews were conducted in the participants’ local lan-
guages. These interviews were fully recorded, transcribed and translated
into English by the local partners who conducted the interviews. The
transcriptions were scanned by two authors who contacted the local
partners (or the interviewers) in cases where the translation was unclear,
or if some concepts relating to local practices needed explaining.
2.5. Analysis
We used an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to
analyse the interviews. The primary objective of IPA is to explore how
individuals comprehend their personal and social surroundings. IPA
aims to understand the signicance that specic experiences, events, or
states hold for the participants (Smith et al., 1999). This was relevant to
our study as we wanted to explore the participants’ behavioural factors.
After an inductive familiarization with the ndings (Bingham, 2023;
Salda˜
na, 2013), we clustered preliminary themes in coding stage 1,
which reected land-users’ perception and behaviours in relation to
their land management. In the second-cycle of coding, we linked these
themes to the COM-B framework. This helped to organise emergent
sub-themes as behavioural inuences related to capability, opportunity,
and motivation.
This combination of initial coding and identication of emergent
sub-themes, using inductive analysis and deductive analysis to group
sub-themes into superordinate themes based on theory, gave us a ho-
listic understanding of the issue, whilst still allowing us to structure our
ndings in the COM-B framework (Bingham, 2023). Some responses
could potentially belong to one or more themes, yet to avoid repetition,
these were categorised according to only one theme or mentioned
briey in the other categories when they were recurrent themes in the
participants’ responses, such as rural exodus or family tradition.
A sample of interview transcripts were coded independently by two
different authors using MaxQDA. Initial codes were compared and dis-
cussed between them to generate themes which emerged from the data.
We thereby ensured the coding system and analysis were rigorous.
3. Findings
Participants’ answers provided us with information on different
factors that inuence their grazing management and are organised ac-
cording to the COM-B model (capability, opportunity and motivation).
We illustrate categories by examples from the interviews. Among the
capability factors, key issues were workforce and demography, avail-
ability or lack of infrastructure, accessibility to knowledge and clarity of
regulations.
3.1. Physical capability
Participants mentioned challenges in conducting grazing manage-
ment linked to the lack of human resources and infrastructure. These
reections were often mentioned with a degree of despair, as they linked
to the broader processes of a rural exodus. A recurring theme was that
the younger generations leave rural areas for more economically-viable
urban areas. The topic was particularly dominant among Interviewees in
case studies situated in Eastern and Southern parts of Europe (PT, DD,
RM, GA, VM), as in:
“There are no people who can work, I can create jobs, but there are no
people”. (RM_4_LU)
In these same areas, participants also often expressed that their
chosen land-use stemmed from a long family tradition, but that new
generations are rarely interested in continuing this type of activity. For
the few young people who might consider this, there are simply no
longer as many traditional farms associated with extensive grazing, as
these had given way to larger farms, such as in the Oder Delta. This may
have further pushed young people away. The term, ‘abandon’, was used
to describe the emigration of these young generations, contrasting them
with older ‘stayers’, as in:
Fig. 2. Number of land-users interviewed, a. how land-users dened themselves or what sector they belong to, nb:“land-user” was used as a general term when they
did not dene themselves by the other terms, b. type of grazing management they conducted.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
5
“Only the older generation practises grazing, young generations largely
abandon the area”. (DD_2_LU)
While such stayers were credited for their loyalty to the landscape,
their physical prowess as farmers could not compete with those of young
people. Put simply, able young bodies are needed to invigorate the
workforce, as much of the labour is manual. However, some participants
working specically in farming suggested that it was the physical nature
of this job on the farm that deterred new recruits and contributed to the
youth leaving for more comfortable jobs, as in:
“The next generation does not want to farm, because it is too hard, too
much work. They usually move abroad and choose easier career options."
(LI_1_LU)
Indeed, activities such as herding animals, and having animals
grazing far away from the farm, require substantial labour compared to
when animals are kept in a barn (Bernu´
es et al., 2005). In some places
such as in the Oder Delta, participants pointed to increased mecha-
nisation and automatization of farming operations as a driver of
employment-losses:
“The decline of agriculture and forestry does (nearly) not lead to land
abandonment, it leads only to raised efciency and productivity, resulting
in the reduction of jobs.” (OD_3_LU)
This participant conrms a known phenomenon whereby the
replacement of manual labour with technology, rather than just making
the work less strenuous, eventually leads to a reduction in available jobs
(Leal Filho et al., 2017).
3.2. Psychological capability
Lack of knowledge, and access to support and education, is a chal-
lenge which some land-users stated they are facing. In some cases, land-
users expressed “isolation” and difculty in accessing knowledge about
the conditions and parameters under which they can access subsidies.
This was mentioned by a Lithuanian land-user:
“Farmers are still very vulnerable, lacking nancial education, living an
isolated life, and lacking communication”. (LI_8_LU)
Such isolation, as we surmised from this participant working in
farming, was both physical (i.e. being physically remote from other
people) and cultural (i.e. lack of knowledge). Knowledge, in this context,
was seen as a kind of combined scientic and lay assessments of best
practices with regard to output. Clashes in the combination of science
and lay knowledge could exacerbate challenges in making the right
decisions. However, numerous land-users also mentioned how situated
knowledge from their practices gave them expertise in their manage-
ment, and that the applicability of knowledge from remote experts was
questioned on the farm in some cases.
“Veterinary inspectors should get proper training about beef cattle, to
learn that they are stronger than dairy cows, that they can graze
throughout winter and that the animal welfare does not suffer due to
this.” (LI_5_LU)
Land-users also mentioned that valuable knowledge was lacking
amongst professionals associated with the industry, which could hinder
them from implementing what they perceived as good practices rooted
in experiential, situated knowledge. For example, land-users mentioned
that veterinary inspectors and organic controllers and their re-
quirements were not necessarily compatible with some practices asso-
ciated with sustainable grazing, such as refraining from systematic
deworming, or having animals outside all-year-round. This was the case
for this land-user from the Oder Delta reecting on the lack of autonomy
for land-users to treat the animals how they consider is best for their
grazing management:
“We try to use as little medicine as possible, like with deworming. I am a
biologist myself and I know that in the past it was typical that all animals
were treated with medicine and then they were brought to another
pasture. But if you proceed like this, the strongest parasites always stay, so
that you create a selection of parasites. But today this has changed,
medicines are only applied individually. But our organic farming
controller was putting us under pressure. When the veterinarian said that
our animals have to be treated with a specic medicine, he gives us
medicine for all animals, but of course he agrees that we treat only the ill
animals and that we can apply this medicine also later, when we see that
another animal is ill. But the organic controller tells us that we are not
veterinarians, so that we are not allowed to use this medicine for another
animal, if we nd that this other animal is ill.” (OD_5_LU)
Disconnection among different knowledge systems also manifests
with several land-users speaking about their own deciencies in navi-
gating the ‘system’. Specically, this referred to their lacking ‘bureau-
cracy literacy’ which, in some cases, exacerbated their disadvantage
when adopting some practices. This was particularly the case with the
CAP’s Cross Compliance and Agri-Environmental Climate Measures
which require substantial administrative work. Indeed, one farmer said
outright:
“If I had known that the bureaucracy would be so extreme, I maybe would
not have started this at all.” (OD_2_LU)
In this way, a lack of knowledge and understanding of policies and
regulations is seen as actively limiting the ability for land-users to get
support in the form of relevant subsidies.
3.3. Physical opportunity
A key factor for land-users was the legislative framework with which
they are confronted at any given time. The CAP was frequently
mentioned by participants as having a central impact on their man-
agement. In particular, the requirements set by the Habitats’ and Birds’
Directives are often implemented via the CAP, i.e. through Cross
Compliance, setting requirements for Good Agricultural and Ecological
Conditions, or via Agri-Environmental Climate Measures (AECM). Par-
ticipants across all case studies mentioned that this aspect of the CAP
was a strong driver of their management as it provides guidelines and
criteria on how animals, and relevant habitats, need to be managed (see
also Pe’er et al., 2021). In many cases, land-users said they do what is
necessary to comply with the CAP’s requirements, even when they do
not agree with the regulations, for example, regarding the clearing of
scrub from pastures.
[We must] “clear them [from scrub, otherwise] we get penalties… as of
300 decares, they count half as ineligible for subsidy because of the
bushes, and instead of receiving a subsidy, we have to pay penalties. […]
The requirement to totally clear the pastures from shrubs is bad for us, the
animals graze them, but the requirements are much stricter … However, in
the dry period, the animals graze the grass under the bushes …and, in the
winter, also eat the leaves and branches from the bushes. The shrubs are
food resources for the animals in the winter when the grass is over, and yet
they press us to remove it”. (RM_2_LU)
Even if economic support stemming from the CAP subsidies often
represents a signicant source of income for participants, they reported
that economic considerations are important, regardless of the type of
management they conduct. Lack of economic support was a particular
challenge for small farms, since direct payments are calculated based on
the farmed area and support levels therefore increase with farm-size.
This generates a benet for larger land-owners. Some land-users saw
this as an incentive for land concentration where ‘big’ land-owners and
farmers take over land from ‘small’ land-owners or farmers. Subsidies
were important for land-users since often their activities were not
generating enough revenue to cover the costs of their activities because
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
6
of the price of the land or the equipment. This aspect was noticeable
across all the case studies:
“In the past, the support used to cover the costs, but now some amount
was reduced or taken away. The taxes and prot tax increases, so prof-
itability is close to zero. (…) It is very difcult to invest and expand as the
cost of the equipment varies, everything goes up, rent goes up, land tax
goes up and so on, the support amount doesn’t change and there may
come a time when you will not pay off to do farming.” (LI_8_LU)
Direct payments also had strong impacts on commons, i.e. land
parcels, which are managed, or used, by communities - a problem that
was raised in Galicia and the Danube Delta. For some land-users working
on commons, economic support from the CAP was not possible, either
because they do not full the ‘farmer’ eligibility criteria for land man-
agement (eligible hectare) or size requirements, or because they nd the
CAP requirements counterproductive for sustainable grazing, partici-
pants mentioned seeking other forms of economic support to facilitate
their grazing management, such as national funds for nature protection,
or private foundations. This was the case, for example, when engaging in
‘rewilding’ activities, where (semi) wild grazers are introduced in nature
areas for conservation purposes. Participants in some rewilding areas
felt that CAP subsidies would even hinder them from conducting good
management and therefore preferred other types of nancing:
“Subsidies can lead to the wrong kind of management of nature areas
because it is driven by just one species, or one area type (N2000), which is
sometimes not appropriate for the area” […] By not applying for CAP
support, we have the freedom to really see what suits the local ecosystem”.
(BM_1_LU)
Land-users across all the case studies mentioned the challenges of
complying with rules and regulations regarding keeping of animals,
especially those that were practising very extensive year-round grazing
or wild grazing. These challenges were repeatedly mentioned in in-
terviews, and regarded for example the obligation to ear-tag animals
within a few days of their birth, or the obligation to microchip equids.
“The problem is tagging, marking animals. Each calf should be tagged
within 7 days of birth. The same goes for animals that lose their earring.
To tag selected animals, "passing" the whole herd is necessary. Several
people, tractors - to tag on one animal. It would be good if the marking
could be done on the occasion of e.g. veterinary procedures and not every
time a new calf is born or a cow loses a marker.” (OD_8_LU)
3.4. Social opportunities
3.4.1. Supportive social environment
Social parameters were often mentioned as a factor affecting land-
users’ grazing management. Family systems, but also relationships with
neighbours and local associations contribute to the maintenance of
practices. However when this supportive social environment is lacking,
grazing practices associated with them decline. In several of the areas
where interviews were conducted, tradition and heritage clearly remain
strong drivers of behaviour. For example, in Galicia, semi-wild pony
grazing and extensive cattle systems are part of very old traditions and,
accordingly, participants emphasised that they were not doing it for
nancial incentives, but because of their passion, or because they had a
strong sense of belonging and pride in the cultural heritage:
“The main reason for the maintenance of this system is that people related
with it love the ponies, they ‘have a fever’, and this tradition runs very
deeply in their hearts”. (GA_5_LU)
They also highlighted the importance of collaboration with peers and
especially collaboration in the family group. This aspect was especially
present in Galicia where much of the land is managed through a system
of commons. This type of management is rooted in a specic culture that
shapes the upbringing and socialization of younger generations. Several
family members often share knowledge, stories and practices about
grazing management. This was the case both in Galicia and in the
Rhodopes Mountains, for example:
“My grandfather worked all his life as a shepherd. He told me stories how
once they slept in the forest and the jackals ate his shoes – they were from
leather and in the night the jackals take and ate them. Now my son is
involved in this and he continues the tradition and I hope that my
grandchildren will also continue the tradition.” (RM_2_LU)
Cultural and family traditions related to animal-rearing were found
to be particularly present in our case-studies in Southern and Eastern
Europe, which strongly inuence management practices. However,
engagement in grazing management is slowing-down and participants
are witnessing increasing rural exodus and depopulation of traditional
agricultural areas. One reason was that these traditional extensive sys-
tems are often not economically protable, and young generations may
be forced to seek work in other sectors, or geographical areas. Aban-
donment of traditionally managed rural landscapes seemed unavoid-
able, according to the participants, and they believed this phenomenon
was going to continue due to the younger generations’ lack of interest of
younger generations for these kinds of activities. This was especially the
case in the case studies in Southern and Eastern Europe.
“It is [a] family tradition, I have worked with animals since I was a child,
and I have a desire to work with animals. My grandparents were livestock
breeders, but my uncle and I started not too long ago. If there is no pos-
sibility to breed animals we have to leave [the] area, to search for work
abroad” (RM_3_LU)
Local networks and associations can contribute to providing land-
users with a supportive social environment and therefore social oppor-
tunities. For example, associations promoting rare local breeds or sup-
port for direct sales of products to consumers. The lack of these
opportunities was also mentioned by several land-users wishing there
would be more opportunities to sell their products from sustainable
grazing, for example in the Oder Delta:
“Maybe it would make sense to create a subsidy also for farm shops. Why
not create an additional subsidy per ha or per animal, if a farmer has a
farm shop? This would be great, because farm shops are difcult for a
farmer, due to the running costs of the job in the farm shop! But subsidies
which could nance a job in a farm shop for at least two years would be
great! And then suddenly many organic farms would dare to create farm
shops! And suddenly we would have a network of direct marketing of
organic products here in the region!” (OD_5_LU)
3.4.2. Land-use conict and human-wildlife co-existence
Participants recurrently mentioned that challenges arise from ten-
sions with neighbouring land-users, such as pollution due to nearby
intensive farming, which inuences their own land management. Some
felt their efforts to manage their land sustainably were in vain in light of
neighbouring land-uses impacting upon their activities. For example,
this was the case when conducting organic farming or semi-wild grazing
next to conventional farms:
“There should be more control over the surrounding farms, especially
regarding the use of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. When you farm
organically, but the nearby farms pollute the environment, then it nega-
tively affects your motivation”. (LI_2_LU)
Tensions around land-use are even more pronounced in systems of
commons, where semi-wild animals co-exist with other types of land
management, due to land-uses which do not allow the presence of freely-
roaming semi-wild grazing animals:
“There are conicts between semi-wild pony grazing and land-owners
(Common Lands) who dedicate the land to afforestation leaving the
ponies without good grazing areas. The problem is worse in the case of
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
7
eucalyptus, which dries-out the land. The commoners also fence-off some
areas where pines are regenerating and don’t allow ponies and cattle to
use that land”. (GA_7_LU)
3.5. Motivation
3.5.1. Reective motivation
In all areas, and especially for participants who conduct grazing
management for the primary goal of nature conservation, reective
motivation was one of the main drivers of behaviour in respect of their
management. The intrinsic care for nature, and the will to perpetuate a
management deemed ‘good’ for ecosystem services such as promoting
habitat for biodiversity or cultural ecosystem services – sometimes
despite nancial challenges – reportedly drives many land-users, espe-
cially those practising semi-wild grazing:
“Highest motivator would be environmental reasons. If it was up to me,
there would only be organic farming in the whole of Lithuania. Herbicides
or pesticides should not be used at all (…). We have always chosen this
pathway because we like nature and natural production”. (LI_2_LU)
Indeed, in rewilding projects, the main priority is often the
ecosystem services provided by specic large herbivores. Our interviews
also indicated that land-users were often torn between their motivation
to take care of nature, and the sometimes conicting need to be
economically sustainable.
3.5.2. Automatic motivation
For many land-users, the motivation to engage in certain manage-
ment not only stems from reective thought processes, but also from
habits, and the automatic motivation of doing what they have done
previously, or what has always been done around them. They felt driven
to do what they are doing because they have always done it, often
because their family used to do it. Often the choice was simply to sustain
a certain type of management to maintain a heritage and a family
tradition, especially for land-users in the Southern and Eastern Europe
that practised extensive grazing:
“I have had horses all my life… I remember all my past generations with
horses, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-
grandfather, everyone”. (GA_5_LU)
Motivation as a factor was particularly frequently mentioned by
land-users who practise rewilding with semi-wild grazers, or some
traditional very extensive management which is not necessarily
economically sustainable, but anchored in a long family or community
tradition.
4. Discussion of ndings
4.1. Key ndings
Participants’ responses often mentioned physical and social oppor-
tunity, with a mix of contextual factors affecting their land management
behaviour. Contextual factors, including access to resources such as
water for the animals, remoteness or conicts with other land-uses in the
area virtually dictate what land-users can do. The broader socioeco-
nomic context, including a supportive social and policy environment, is
also important (Dessart et al., 2019; L¨
apple and Kelley, 2015). The most
frequently-mentioned driver among our participants was the policy map
of opportunities and challenges, with the EU’s CAP being one of the most
dominant factors inuencing land-users’ grazing management. The CAP
offers nance to engage in farming, and regulations dening what types
of farming and management can be supported (and by which instru-
ment). However, the CAP also comes along with a range of limitations.
Land-users in our study perceived the CAP as containing out-of-touch
requirements, an excessive administrative burden and sanctions, as
well as disproportionately greater nancial support for less sustainable
management, thus generating what they deemed as unfair/difcult
competition with unsustainable farming systems. These ndings join a
host of scholarship on the disciplinary effects of ‘Europeanisation’ on
policy and practice (Clark and Jones, 2009). In this critical perspective,
Europeanisation provides not only benets, but also it enrol citizens of
member states in involuntary forms of rationalisation and bureau-
cratisation that may hinder rather than enable progress. It is thus
essential to nd a better balance between voluntary and non-voluntary
approaches, to reduce burdens, and enhance the benets from partici-
pating in relevant measures (Pe’er et al., 2022).
As regards physical and psychological capabilities, knowledge was
found to be a critical driver of land-users’ behaviour. This is in agree-
ment with previous studies looking at motivation and behaviour-change
in farmers (Macgregor and Warren, 2006; Llewellyn, 2007). To this end,
achieving a balance in knowledge between that of the scientic per-
spectives of veterinary inspectors on the one hand, and an
experience-based lay assessment on the other hand, remained a chal-
lenge. This tension is currently manifested across a growing range of
farming, biosecurity and livestock contexts, in which civilians and lay
persons report a buttressing of veterinary authority vis-a-vis other forms
of knowledge in a process termed ‘veterinarization’ (Broz et al., 2021).
We found that particularly the lack of a qualied workforce, un-
derstood as physically strong, and people willing to take-over traditional
animal-rearing practices, hinder the continuation of such activities
(Ustaoglu, Collier, 2018). This is often exacerbated by the continuing
trend whereby young generations do not share the traditional values of
their parents, and do not want to continue extensive grazing practices
that have persisted for multiple generations (Duesberg et al., 2017;
Leonard et al., 2017). Among the land-users we interviewed, many
indicated an inherent sense of duty to perform what they perceived as
good management for nature, while also being driven to perpetuate the
traditional management which had been conducted by their family. The
fact that the younger generations do not share this duty was lamented by
some. Land abandonment and severing ties with generational agricul-
ture is a global trend (Leal Filho et al., 2017) but recent research also
indicates that new pathways for (re)joining this way of life may be afoot,
including radical ruralisms around agro-food initiatives that appeal to
‘back-to-the-land’ sentiments and aesthetics (Wilbur, 2013). It is dif-
cult to say exactly how this new demographic assimilates or breaks with
farming norms akin to those reported in this study. There is reason to
believe, however, that we may see both a differentiation of farmers into
communities of practice that position themselves on the basis of
different approaches to e.g. grazing and farming generally, and a slower
melting pot of values and norms. The role of farmer communities of
practice on decision-making has been found by recent research to be
considerable (O’Kane et al., 2008).
Outside of these soft norms and values, a common and inescapable
challenge for many land-users is of a nancial nature (Kabii and Hor-
witz, 2006), as engagement in extensive grazing offers a lower income
compared to more intensive practices. This makes such practices less
competitive, or potentially even economically unviable, unless sup-
ported by subsidies, such as from the CAP. These challenges highlight
the trade-off between what is ecologically and/or culturally valuable,
and what is economically viable and, accordingly, the challenge of
reaching sustainability in the broader sense, i.e. economic, social and
environmental sustainability. Moreover, it highlights the trade-off
among these dimensions, but also points at some solutions, such as the
enhancement of public acceptance and economical support by means of
increased subsidies, for example, of traditional practices as cultural
assets.
4.2. Intervention functions and associated policies to support sustainable
grazing
One of the benets of the BCW is the ability to link factors that
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
8
inuence human behaviour to intervention functions and supportive
policies, in order to design effective and targeted behaviour change in-
terventions. Using the BCW model (Michie et al., 2011; Fig. 3), we can
identify a wide range of possible interventions that would inuence
land-users’ behaviours. The links between all COM-B aspects and the
different types of intervention functions, as well as the links between the
intervention functions and policy categories are identied from the
authors of the BCW (Michie et al., 2011, 2014) (Supplementary Table 3).
In this way, the BCW helps to make a systematic selection of the inter-
vention functions and policy categories most effective at changing the
determinants of behaviour. For example, physical and social opportu-
nity was the most frequently COM-B aspect from our participants’ re-
sponses, using the BCW, the linked interventions functions are:
enablement, environmental restructuring and restrictions.
In our study, environmental restructuring intervention functions
would include both changing the physical environmental context to
favour sustainable practices - e.g.,land management interventions,
which aim at preserving, or restoring, grazing lands (Sutherland et al.,
2019) - as well as interventions that change the social context for sus-
tainable grazing management. Environmental restructuring in-
terventions help to address the context in which decisions are made
(Whitmarsh et al., 2021). For example, Byerly et al., (2018) found that
interventions to change the social context (e.g. agricultural extension
agent of the same gender as the farmer; showing a conservation practice
is socially desirable among peers) increased farmers’s sustainable land
management behaviours. Nudging land-users into conducting sustain-
able practices can alter behaviours without forbidding any options and
without signicant changes in economic incentives (Byerly et al., 2018).
In our case studies this could be through networking with other
land-users for knowledge sharing (Mills et al., 2017).
Enablement interventions are about increasing means or reducing
barriers to increase capability (beyond education and training) or op-
portunity (beyond environmental restructuring) (Michie et al., 2011). In
the context of health behaviours, enablement interventions include
things like behavioural support to stop smoking or access to surgery to
reduce obesity (Michie et al., 2011). In nature conservation, enablement
interventions could include access to subsidies or loans to encourage the
desired behaviour or create an online platform for social support and
assistance with action planning (Marselle et al., 2020).
Restrictions are interventions which use rules to limit unsustainable
behaviours. In our case, it could be, for example, restricting the number
of animals allowed per hectare, or restricting the access to some veter-
inary medicine products which have a negative impact on biodiversity
(Floate et al., 2005). However, prohibitions need to be implemented in a
way that is compatible with land-users’ current practices, and be openly
discussed with land-users as to their reasoning and implications. The
notion of already substantial bureaucracy also coming with a suite of
proscriptions is not likely to elicit compliance from land-users who
already feel aggrieved.
Conservation ecologists and practitioners often rely on a few
behaviour change intervention functions, such as education, incentives,
and regulation (Byerly et al., 2018; Cinner et al., 2018) while underusing
others (e.g., social norms, situational context) (Amel et al., 2017; Byerly
et al., 2018; Cinner et al., 2018). In this way, the BCW helped a) link
interventions to their behavioural inuences relating to land-use man-
agement and b) broaden the interventions options available to
addressing encouraging sustainable grazing behaviour.
The BCW also helps to identify the policy options that best support
the intervention functions of environmental restructuring, enablement
and restriction (Supplementary Table 3)(Michie et al., 2011, 2014). In so
doing, we highlight four types of policy options to address these three
intervention functions:. i) regulation & legislation, ii) scal measures,
iii) environmental & social planning and iv) service-provision. These
four policy options can support the above outlined interventions, in
order to help motivated land-users, and to motivate the transition of
others, towards sustainable grazing (Supplementary Table 3).
Regulation and legislation can address multiple behavioural inter-
vention functions. From our interviews, two key regulations in partic-
ular that could impact upon land-users’ practises and encourage more
sustainable practises by mitigating challenges to practising sustainable
grazing were presented. Firstly, land-users called for, and would benet
from, increased exibility to the ear-marking (CAP Regulation no. 1760/
2000) and micro-chipping obligations. These are difcult to carry-out in
extensive grazing schemes, given that semi-wild grazers, especially in
Fig. 3. The Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) (adapted from Michie et al# 2011) showing, at the core, the capabilities, opportunities, and source of motivation for
land-users’ behaviour, based on our interviews. The outer layers highlight the way behaviours can be inuenced by nine intervention functions, and how these
interventions are supported by policy instrument categories (outer part of the wheel), as discussed in 4.1.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
9
less accessible landscapes, are hard to locate, control and mark within
the currently applicable strict required timeframe. Second, reducing the
regulation burden of sustainable practices such as organic farming could
therefore be a way to incentivise sustainable practices and make them
less cumbersome (Sahm et al., 2013).
Fiscal measures serve two intervention functions that we have
identied to be relevant to our study, namely environmental restruc-
turing and enablement. They contribute to creating a better societal
context for good practices among land-users, and provide behavioural
support. The CAP was the most frequently-mentioned policy affecting
land-users engaged in grazing practices, shaping their type of manage-
ment top-down. Participants pointed at the value of CAP payments,
across various instruments, for maintaining the grazing model that they
are implementing, thus demonstrating the necessity and usefulness of
nancial support. At the same time, participants pointed to a much-
needed improvement in coherence of CAP instruments to encourage
sustainable grazing management, especially through Agri-
Environmental Climate Measures (AECM), Eco-schemes, and payments
for Areas facing Nature Constraints, whilst concomitantly reducing
support for intensive grazing (in line with the requirement to phase out
harmful subsidies). With the latter being economically more competi-
tive, equal support leads to an unequal opportunity favouring intensi-
cation (Scown et al., 2020).
On this basis, it would be instructive for decision-makers to enhance
investments of Member States in AECM to support sustainable (exten-
sive) grazing systems, as they are effective when well-implemented
(Bat´
ary et al., 2015). Member states should maximise their AECM
budget and ensure that AECMs are supplemented effectively by
Eco-schemes to expand the supported area (and number of supported
farmers) to improve habitat quality. It may furthermore be advanta-
geous to maximise the budget for those AECM options that allow greater
exibility in implementation. This would allow motivated land-users to
utilise their situated knowledge for selecting optimum management and
adaptation to local conditions and changing weather (Reed et al., 2014a,
2014b; Petit et al., 2022). Allowing greater exibility in implementation
could also be facilitated by collaborative frameworks enabling dialogue
among stakeholders and land-users, for instance by implementing
mechanisms to share territorial challenges among stakeholders who may
not typically communicate, aiming to initiate local multi-stakeholder
dynamics. Importantly, exibility permits land-users to also retain a
degree of autonomy, according to their knowledge, perceptions and
needs (Petit et al., 2022), at a time when outside expert advice or policy
may feel clunky in its one-size-ts-all approach. Flexibility is a theme
that arguably also extends to the self-reporting by land-owners. A
prominent example is the system around compensation for predator
attacks, and particularly insufcient access to prevention measures, that
has been kept rigid and confusing, and poorly adapted to the local re-
alities of land-users involved in extensive grazing.
Using the BCW we demonstrate a need to broaden the set of in-
terventions to aid the transition to sustainable grazing. This broadening
is tightly related also to a broader scope that is needed from a policy
perspective, with complementary policy instruments that are necessary
beyond the CAP, such as the Nature Restoration Law that may better
facilitate improvements in the regulatory, societal and perhaps also
budgetary frameworks that are needed to support the transition to sus-
tainable grazing (see Hering et al., 2023). Further policies such as the
“framework for Sustainable Food Systems” which the European Com-
mission proposed to release as part of the Green Deal could also further
incentivise better grazing practices.
4.3. Sustainable grazing for resilient landscapes
Extensive grazing by large herbivores is, as noted, a hallmark of the
rewilding movement. Getting land-users on-board with rewilding and
other semi-wild grazing practices, given its frequently contested nature,
requires a delicate approach (Lorimer et al., 2015; Perino et al., 2019).
Rewilding must not mean the absence of humans, infrastructure and
support as far as grazers are concerned. Land-users have already iden-
tied remoteness of resources and water accessibility to support such
schemes as obstacles. Hence, in order to facilitate rewilding practices for
motivated land-users, both environmental restructuring and enablement
are required. In practise, this will involve creating a more active coun-
tryside which can support multiple income streams, including income
diversication of farms through various practices; expanding market
opportunities (especially via direct marketing), and ecotourism prac-
tices around wild and semi-wild grazing systems. Ecotourism could
additionally contribute to environmental education and public aware-
ness regarding semi-wild grazing systems and the value of rewilding.
Land-users particularly expressed a call for greater support to improve
their access to markets, for example through direct marketing as an
important source of a complementary income where land-users can sell
products that stem from extensive- and semi-wild grazing animals,
especially with local or unique breeds (Roche et al., 2022). This is
especially relevant in areas that have undergone land abandonment. In
these areas, expanding or restoring infrastructure for ecotourism, edu-
cation and product-marketing, as well as anticipating and facilitating
conict resolution around rewilding (Pellis, 2019; Lorimer et al., 2015),
are ways forward to reinvigorating the countryside and promoting
extensive grazing. For such ecotourism to thrive, grazer species need to
be selected for their function in the ecosystem, their robustness, but also
their charisma and potential for interesting ecotourism practises.
Finally, environmental restructuring is relevant from a social
perspective to improve societal acceptability and support for sustainable
grazing both by land-users and other societal actors (e.g. peers, con-
sumers), to generate a more socially and economically-accommodating
environment to operate in. For example, some narratives can raise (or
recover) the interest among land-users, especially the younger genera-
tions, to encourage (re-)adopting such practices. These may include 1)
acknowledging that tradition and modernity do not oppose to each other
(Petit et al., 2019,2022), 2) communicating societal innovation around
rewilding (Ziegler et al., 2022), 3) promoting the work in rugged terrain
as means to support one’s sense of strength and self-fullment, or 4)
focusing on the value of physical and mental wellbeing as co-benets of
such practices (García-Llorente et al., 2016).
Environmental restructuring, as a bottom-up approach, also involves
the physical protection and restoration of landscape features (Pe’er
et al., 2022). This is especially important in systems which rely on
commons. Adopting a landscape design approach may allow a better
understanding and planning of ecosystem services-provision from
grazing systems. Examples of ecosystem services that may benet from
landscape-scale planning are wildre mitigation (Rouet-Leduc et al.,
2021), enhancing habitat connectivity, and generating a larger-scale
green infrastructure to secure habitat provision for macro-fauna,
which requires both sufcient habitats and connectivity between them
(Perino et al., 2019). Moreover, collaboration between different
land-users can improve not only ecological conditions, but also social
cohesion and engagement in good practices (Westerink et al., 2017). We
note that ideas of building from the ground-up to shape the sorts of
landscape practices and species distributions one desires, is an estab-
lished approach in the countryside all across Europe (Hell, 1996).
4.4. Limitations
This study provided important insights into the factors that inuence
land-users in their grazing management in very contrasting parts of
Europe. However, we also acknowledge some limitations. Firstly, due to
the set-up of the project, which was highly transdisciplinary, we had to
adapt to the conditions of the project that aimed at providing policy
recommendations through policy reports (Pe’er et al., 2021) – this led to
the fact that the set-up for the interview was predened by the project
itself. Additionally, due to the purposive sampling techniques employed,
the factors of behaviours identied concern primarily land-users
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
10
conducting extensive and semi-wild grazing. Hence, we focused our
study on why these land-users chose to work on extensive or semi-wild
grazing, and on which challenges they experienced. We could, however,
not study the motivations of land-users practising other (more intensive)
forms of grazing management. Future studies could usefully investigate
the challenges of land-users who do not engage in sustainable grazing, to
further assess barriers and facilitators of transformation. In this study we
did not delve into analysing the specic backgrounds of the in-
terviewees, such as age, socioeconomic background or career paths.
Further studies may benet from exposing how individuality and the
diversity in backgrounds shape land-users’ perceptions and decisions.
This may help in identication of the most appropriate strategies and
instruments to foster a transition to sustainable grazing. As the project’s
goal was to identify the factors inuencing land-users in their grazing
practices, many behaviour change frameworks could have been used.
We used the BCW framework afterwards to organise and analyse our
results in the best way, because it is an integrative model of behaviour
change that addresses the gaps found in different behaviour change 19
frameworks by including both individual and structural factors that
inuence behaviour into the COM-B and highlighting the full range of
interventions (‘downstream’ and ‘upstream’) available to address these
factors (Whitmarsh et al., 2021; Michie et al., 2011; Michie et al., 2014;
Michie and West, 2013). Moreover, having access to land-users from
multiple areas in Europe provided interesting insights, even though the
need to conduct interviews in local languages, and then translate them,
did present some limitations in translating the nuances of these different
interviews. Due to the practical limitations of the project, the interviews
were translated by the local partners of the project that conducted the
interview, having a professional translator could have resulted in a more
rigorous translation. Having the translation from local partners had the
advantage of providing understanding and nuance to some of the local
cultural context where the interviews were conducted.
5. Conclusions and outlook
Transitions to, and continuation of, sustainable extensive grazing
practices depend on the capability, opportunity and motivations of land-
users. In this study, we leveraged the BCW to deconstruct such capa-
bilities and motivation among land-users across Europe. We situated our
study in the policy context of the EU’s CAP, the cultural context of a
rural exodus, and in an analytical context that understood land-users as
responsive to both top-down and bottom-up approaches to promote
extensive grazing. At the same time, our BCW illustrated that land-users
are also part of social networks in the countryside which share norms
and perceptions about labour, human-animal relationships, and opin-
ions on the place of veterinary expertise. Through our interviews across
eight case-study sites, our study was able to provide a broad, yet sys-
tematic, overview of the motivational landscape of present-day land-
users. As part of this, we identied challenges that were similar across
different areas, such as the difculty related to controlling animals,
administrative burdens, or accommodating veterinary rules imposed by
outside experts. In contrast, we identied some regional characteristics,
for example, challenges linked to the rural depopulation and land
abandonment were especially prevalent in Southern and Eastern
Europe, while it was not the case in Northern Europe. With drivers of
behaviours being highly context-specic, it would be relevant to enrich
this study with even more case-studies from different places in Europe.
Our ndings also allowed us to identify the most relevant intervention
functions for facilitating sustainable practices, as well as policy types.
Using the Behaviour Change Wheel helped us to identify relevant
intervention functions and policy categories, and it is clear that, when it
comes to facilitating sustainable grazing practices, it is important to
combine different intervention functions and types of policies in order to
inuence the different sources of behaviour.
Data accessibility statement
As per our agreement with the University of Leipzig Ethics ofce, and
due to the condentiality of the data, we are unable to make it publicly
available.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Guy Pe’er: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft,
Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis,
Conceptualization. Erica von Essen: Writing – review & editing,
Writing – original draft, Methodology. Melissa Marselle: Writing – re-
view & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Methodology.
Julia Rouet-Leduc: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft,
Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Fons van der Plas:
Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision,
Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Wouter Helmer:
Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualiza-
tion. Aletta Bonn: Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
The data that has been used is condential.
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to all our interview participants and thank them for
their time and expertise. We thank the GRAZELIFE partners that con-
ducted and transcribed the interviews in the case studies. We want to
especially thank Laura Lagos Abarzuza, Jaime Fagúndez and Jos´
e
Antonio Cort´
es V´
asquez for their useful input on the interview guide.
This study was conducted as part of GRAZELIFE, a LIFE Preparatory
Project on request of the European Commission to assess the impact of
different grazing systems on ecosystem service provision (LIFE18PRE/
NL002). We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the German
Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG-FZT 118, 202548816) and in
particular funding for the strategic project iCAP-BES. GP further ac-
knowledges support from Horizon Europe project Agroecology-
TRANSECT (Horizon Europe contract, grant agreement No.
101060816) and CAP4GI (funded by the German Ministry of Education
and Research (BMBF) within the Research Initiative for the Conserva-
tion of Biodiversity (FEdA), support code: 01UT2102A).
Appendix A. Supporting information
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the
online version at doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107146.
References
Alexander, K.E., Brijnath, B., Mazza, D., 2014. Barriers and enablers to delivery of the
healthy kids check: an analysis informed by the theoretical domains framework and
COM-B model. Implement. Sci. 9 (1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-9-
60.
Amel, E., Manning, C., Scott, B., Koger, S., 2017. Beyond the roots of human inaction:
fostering collective effort toward ecosystem conservation. Science 356, 275–279.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal1931.
Bat´
ary, P., Dicks, L.V., Kleijn, D., Sutherland, W.J., 2015. The role of agri-environment
schemes in conservation and environmental management. Conserv. Biol. 29,
1006–1016.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
11
Baumgart-Getz, A., Prokopy, L.S., Floress, K., 2012. Why farmers adopt best management
practice in the United States: a meta-analysis of the adoption literature. J. Environ.
Manag. 96 (1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JENVMAN.2011.10.006.
Belknap, J., Saupe, W.E., 1988. Farm family resources and the adoption of no-plow
tillage in southwestern Wisconsin north central. J. Agric. Econ. 10 (1), 13–23.
Bellarby, J., Tirado, R., Leip, A., Weiss, F., Lesschen, J.P., Smith, P., 2013. Livestock
greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potential in Europe. Glob. Change Biol. 19
(1), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02786.x.
Bentley, M.R.N., Mitchell, N., Sutton, L., Backhouse, S.H., 2019. Sports nutritionists’
perspectives on enablers and barriers to nutritional adherence in high performance
sport: a qualitative analysis informed by the COM-B model and theoretical domains
framework. J. Sports Sci. 37 (18), 2075–2085. https://doi.org/10.1080/
02640414.2019.1620989.
Bernu´
es, A., Riedel, J.L., Asensio, M.A., Blanco, M., Sanz, A., Revilla, R., Casasús, I.,
2005. An integrated approach to studying the role of grazing livestock systems in the
conservation of rangelands in a protected natural park (Sierra de Guara, Spain).
Livest. Prod. Sci. 96 (1), 75–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.
LIVPRODSCI.2005.05.023.
Bingham, A.J., 2023. From data management to actionable ndings: a ve-phase process
of qualitative data analysis. Int. J. Qual. Methods 22. https://doi.org/10.1177/
16094069231183620.
Broz, L., Arregui, A.G., O’Mahony, K., 2021. Wild boar events and the veterinarization of
multispecies coexistence. Front. Conserv. Sci. 2 https://doi.org/10.3389/
fcosc.2021.711299. 〈https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/〉.
Buckton, S.J., Fazey, I., Sharpe, B., Om, E.S., Doherty, B., Ball, P., Denby, K., Bryant, M.,
Lait, R., Bridle, S., Cain, M., Carmen, E., Collins, L., Nixon, N., Yap, C., Connolly, A.,
Fletcher, B., Frankowska, A., Gardner, G., Sinclair, M., 2023. The regenerative lens: a
conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems. One Earth 6 (7),
824–842. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.06.006.
Burton, R.J.F., 2004. Reconceptualising the ‘behavioural approach’ in agricultural
studies: a socio-psychological perspective. J. Rural Stud. 20 (3), 359–371. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2003.12.001.
Byerly, H., Balmford, A., Ferraro, P.J., Hammond Wagner, C., Palchak, E., Polasky, S.,
Ricketts, T.H., Schwartz, A.J., Fisher, B., 2018. Nudging pro-environmental
behavior: evidence and opportunities. Front. Ecol. Environ. 16, 159–168. https://
doi.org/10.1002/fee.1777.
Cinner, J.E., Adger, W.N., Allison, E.H., Barnes, M.L., Brown, K., Cohen, P.J., Gelcich, S.,
Hicks, C.C., Hughes, T.P., Lau, J., Marshall, N.A., Morrison, T.H., 2018. Building
adaptive capacity to climate change in tropical coastal communities. Nat. Clim.
Change 8, 117–123. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0065-x.
Clark, J.R.A., Jones, A.R., 2009. Europeanisation and Its discontents. Space Polity 13 (3),
193–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562570903454291.
Couvreur, S., Petit, T., Guen, R.L., Arfa, N.B., Jacquerie, V., Sigwalt, A., Haimoud-
Lekhal, D.A., Chaib, K., Defois, J., Martel, G., 2019. D´
eterminants techniques et
sociologiques du maintien des prairies dans les ´
elevages bovins laitiers de plaine
(Article). INRAE Prod. Anim. 32 (3), 3. https://doi.org/10.20870/productions-
animales.2019.32.3.2940.
DeClerck, F., Jones, S., Attwood, S., Bossio, D., Girvetz, E., Chaplin-Kramer, B., Enfors, E.,
Fremier, A., Gordon, L., Kizito, F., Lopez Noriega, I., Matthews, N., McCartney, M.,
Meacham, M., Noble, A., Quintero, M., Remans, R., Soppe, R., Willemen, L.,
Zhang, W., 2016. Agricultural ecosystems and their services: the vanguard of
sustainability? Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 23, 92–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
cosust.2016.11.016.
Dessart, F.J., Barreiro-Hurl´
e, J., van Bavel, R., 2019. Behavioural factors affecting the
adoption of sustainable farming practices: a policy-oriented review. Eur. Rev. Agric.
Econ. 46 (3), 417–471. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbz019.
Duesberg, S., Bogue, P., Renwick, A., 2017. Retirement farming or sustainable growth –
land transfer choices for farmers without a successor. Land Use Policy 61, 526–535.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.12.007.
Dwyer, J., Mills, J., Ingram, J., Taylor, J., Burton, R., Blackstock, K., Slee, B., et al., 2007.
Understanding and inuencing positive behaviour change in farmers and land
managers—a project for Defra. CCRI, Macaulay Institute, Gloucester.
Flick, U., Kardorff, von, E., Steinke, I., 2004. A Companion To Qualitative Research.
Sage.
Floate, K.D., Wardhaugh, K.G., Boxall, A.B.A., Sherratt, T.N., 2005. Fecal residues of
veterinary parasiticides: nontarget effects in the pasture environment. Annu. Rev.
Entomol. 50 (1), 153–179. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.
ento.50.071803.130341.
Fuhlendorf, S.D., Harrell, W.C., Engle, D.M., Hamilton, R.G., Davis, C.A., Leslie, D.M.,
2006. SHOULD heterogeneity be the basis for conservation? grassland bird response
to re and grazing. Ecol. Appl. Vol. 16 (Issue 5).
García-Llorente, M., Rossignoli, C.M., Di Iacovo, F., Moruzzo, R., 2016. Social farming in
the promotion of social-ecological sustainability in rural and periurban areas
(Article). Sustainability 8 (12), 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8121238.
Garnett, T., Godde, C., Muller, A., R¨
o¨
os, E., Smith, P., de Boer, I., Zu Ermgassen, E.,
Herrero, M., van Middelaar, C., Schader, C., & van Zanten, H. (2017). Grazed and
confused?: Ruminating on cattle, grazing systems, methane, nitrous oxide, the soil
carbon sequestration question - and what it all means for greenhouse gas emissions.
Gonz´
alez-Hern´
andez, M.P., Mouronte, V., Romero, R., Rigueiro-Rodríguez, A.,
Mosquera-Losada, M.R., 2020. Plant diversity and botanical composition in an
Atlantic heather-gorse dominated understory after horse grazing suspension:
comparison of a continuous and rotational management. Glob. Ecol. Conserv. 23.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01134.
Hell, B., 1996. Enraged hunters: the domain of the wild in north-western Europe. In:
Descola, P., P´
alsson., G. (Eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives.
Routledge, London, pp. 205–217.
Hering, D., Schürings, C., Wenskus, F., Blackstock, K., Borja, A., Birk, S., Bullock, C.,
Carvalho, L., Dagher-Kharrat, M.B., Lakner, S., Lovri´
c, N., McGuinness, S.,
Nabuurs, G.-J., S´
anchez-Arcilla, A., Settele, J., Pe’er, G., 2023. Securing success for
the nature restoration law. Science 382, 1248–1250. https://doi.org/10.1126/
science.adk1658.
Humbert, J.Y., Delley, S., Arlettaz, R., 2021. Grassland intensication dramatically
impacts grasshoppers: experimental evidence for direct and indirect effects of
fertilisation and irrigation. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 314, 107412 https://doi.org/
10.1016/J.AGEE.2021.107412.
Jungell-Michelsson, J., Heikkurinen, P., 2022. Sufciency: a systematic literature review.
Ecol. Econ. 195, 107380 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107380.
Kabii, T., Horwitz, P., 2006. A review of landholder motivations and determinants for
participation in conservation covenanting programmes. Environ. Conserv. 33 (1),
11–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892906002761.
van Klink, R., van der Plas, F., van Noordwijk, C.G.E.T., Wallisdevries, M.F., Olff, H.,
2015. Effects of large herbivores on grassland arthropod diversity. Biol. Rev. 90 (2),
347–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12113.
Koerner, S.E., Smith, M.D., Burkepile, D.E., Hanan, N.P., Avolio, M.L., Collins, S.L.,
Knapp, A.K., Lemoine, N.P., Forrestel, E.J., Eby, S., Thompson, D.I., Aguado-
Santacruz, G.A., Anderson, J.P., Anderson, T.M., Angassa, A., Bagchi, S., Bakker, E.
S., Bastin, G., Baur, L.E., Zelikova, T.J., 2018. Change in dominance determines
herbivore effects on plant biodiversity. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 2 (12), 1925–1932. https://
doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0696-y.
Kropf, B., Schmid, E., Sch¨
onhart, M., Mitter, H., 2020. Exploring farmers’ behavior
toward individual and collective measures of Western corn rootworm control – A
case study in south-east Austria. J. Environ. Manag. 264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jenvman.2020.110431.
L¨
apple, D., Kelley, H., 2015. Spatial dependence in the adoption of organic drystock
farming in Ireland. Eur. Rev. Agric. Econ. 42 (2), 315–337. https://doi.org/10.1093/
erae/jbu024.
Leal Filho, W., Mandel, M., Al-Amin, A.Q., Feher, A., Chiappetta Jabbour, C.J., 2017. An
assessment of the causes and consequences of agricultural land abandonment in
Europe. Int. J. Sustain. Dev. World Ecol. 24 (6), 554–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/
13504509.2016.1240113.
Leonard, B., Kinsella, A., O’Donoghue, C., Farrell, M., Mahon, M., 2017. Policy drivers of
farm succession and inheritance. Land Use Policy 61, 147–159. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.09.006.
Llewellyn, R.S., 2007. Information quality and effectiveness for more rapid adoption
decisions by farmers. Field Crops Res. 104 (1), 148–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
fcr.2007.03.022.
Lorimer, J., Sandom, C., Jepson, P., Doughty, C., Barua, M., Kirby, K.J., 2015. Rewilding:
science, practice, and politics. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 40 (1), 39–62. https://
doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102014-021406.
Lynne, G.D., Shonkwiler, J.S., Rola, L.R., 1988. Attitudes and farmer conservation
behavior. Am. J. Agric. Econ. 70 (1), 12e19.
Macgregor, C.J., Warren, C.R., 2006. Adopting sustainable farm management practices
within a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone in Scotland: the view from the farm. Agric. Ecosyst.
Environ. 113 (1-4), 108–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2005.09.003.
Manning, P., Gossner, M.M., Bossdorf, O., Allan, E., Zhang, Y.-Y., Prati, D., Blüthgen, N.,
Boch, S., B¨
ohm, S., B¨
orschig, C., H¨
olzel, N., Jung, K., Klaus, V.H., Klein, A.M.,
Kleinebecker, T., Krauss, J., Lange, M., Müller, J., Paˇ
sali´
c, E., Fischer, M., 2015.
Grassland management intensication weakens the associations among the
diversities of multiple plant and animal taxa. Ecology 96 (6), 1492–1501. https://
doi.org/10.1890/14-1307.1.
Marselle, M.R., Turbe, A., Shwartz, A., Bonn, A., Coll´
eony, A., 2021. Addressing behavior
in pollinator conservation policies to combat the implementation gap. Conserv. Biol.
35 (2), 610–622. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13581.
McDowell, C., Sparks, R., 1989. The multivariate modelling and prediction of farmers’
conservation behaviour towards natural ecosystems [for example the West Coast
renosterveld, the most reduced habitat-type in South Africa]. J. Environ. Manag.
Michie, S., West, R., 2013. Behaviour change theory and evidence: a presentation to
government. Health Psychol. Rev. 7, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/
17437199.2011.649445.
Michie, S., van Stralen, M.M., West, R., 2011. The behaviour change wheel: a new
method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions.
Implement. Sci. 6 (1), 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42.
Mills, J., Gaskell, P., Ingram, J., Dwyer, J., Reed, M., Short, C., 2017. Engaging farmers in
environmental management through a better understanding of behaviour. Agric.
Hum. Values 34 (2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9705-4.
Moreira, F., Viedma, O., Arianoutsou, M., Curt, T., Koutsias, N., Rigolot, E., Barbati, A.,
Corona, P., Vaz, P., Xanthopoulos, G., Mouillot, F., Bilgili, E., 2011. Landscape -
wildre interactions in southern Europe: implications for landscape management.
J. Environ. Manag. 92 (10), 2389–2402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jenvman.2011.06.028.
Navarro, A., L´
opez-Bao, J.V., 2019. EU agricultural policy still not green. Nat. Sustain. 2
(11), 990. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0424-x.
Nystr¨
om, M., Jouffray, J.-B., Norstr¨
om, A.V., Crona, B., Søgaard Jørgensen, P.,
Carpenter, S.R., Bodin, ¨
O., Galaz, V., Folke, C., 2019. Anatomy and resilience of the
global production ecosystem (Article). Nature 575 (7781), 7781. https://doi.org/
10.1038/s41586-019-1712-3.
O’Kane, M.P., Paine, M.S., King, B.J., 2008. Context, participation and discourse: the role
of the communities of practice concept in understanding farmer decision-making.
J. Agric. Educ. Ext. 14 (3), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/
13892240802320388.
Olff, H., Ritchie, M.E., 1998. Effects of herbivores on grassland plant diversity. Trends
Ecol. Evol. 13 (7), 261–265. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(98)01364-0.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
Land Use Policy 141 (2024) 107146
12
Pe’er, G., Bonn, A., Bruelheide, H., Dieker, P., Eisenhauer, N., Feindt, P.H., Hagedorn, G.,
Hansjürgens, B., Herzon, I., Lomba, ˆ
A., Marquard, E., Moreira, F., Nitsch, H.,
Oppermann, R., Perino, A., R¨
oder, N., Schleyer, C., Schindler, S., Wolf, C., Lakner, S.,
2020. Action needed for the EU Common agricultural policy to address sustainability
challenges. People Nat. 2 (2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080.
Pe’er, G., Rouet-Leduc, J., van der Plas, F., Helmer, W., Moreira, F., Rauhut, J., …
Morkv˙
enas, ˇ
Z. (2021). How European policies, especially the Common Agricultural
Policy, can better support extensive grazing systems: Synthesis of interviews with
land users and experts. Retrieved from 〈https://www.rewildingeurope.com/wp-con
tent/uploads/publications/grazelife-report/〉.
Pellis, A., 2019. Reality effects of conict avoidance in rewilding and ecotourism
practices–the case of Western Iberia. J. Ecotourism 4049. https://doi.org/10.1080/
14724049.2019.1579824.
Perino, A., Pereira, H.M., Navarro, L.M., Fern´
andez, N., Bullock, J.M., Ceaus¸u, S., Cort´
es-
Avizanda, A., van Klink, R., Kuemmerle, T., Lomba, A., Pe’er, G., Plieninger, T.,
Benayas, J.M.R., Sandom, C.J., Svenning, J.C., Wheeler, H.C., 2019. Rewilding
complex ecosystems. Science 364 (6438). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5570.
Petit, T., Sigwalt, A., Le Guen, R., Martel, G., Couvreur, S., 2019. Place des prairies dans
les logiques fourrag`
eres des ´
eleveurs laitiers du grand ouest de la France. Fourrages
239, 235–245.
Petit, T., Sigwalt, A., Martel, G., Couvreur, S., 2022. The Place of grasslands in cattle
farmers’ perceptions of forage production: useful insights of 10 years of empirical
research on grasslands (Article). Sustainability 14 (19), 19. https://doi.org/
10.3390/su141912309.
Plieninger, T., Hartel, T., Martín-L´
opez, B., Beaufoy, G., Bergmeier, E., Kirby, K.,
Montero, M.J., Moreno, G., Oteros-Rozas, E., Van Uytvanck, J., 2015. Wood-pastures
of Europe: geographic coverage, social-ecological values, conservation management,
and policy implications. Biol. Conserv. 190, 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
biocon.2015.05.014.
Prokopy, L.S., Floress, K., Arbuckle, J.G., Church, S.P., Eanes, F.R., Gao, Y., Gramig, B.M.,
Ranjan, P., Singh, A.S., 2019. Adoption of agricultural conservation practices in the
United States: evidence from 35 years of quantitative literature. J. SOIL WATER
Conserv. SEPT 74 (5). https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.74.5.520.
Reed, M.S., Stringer, L.C., Fazey, I., Evely, A.C., Kruijsen, J.H., 2014b. Five principles for
the practice of knowledge exchange in environmental management. J. Environ.
Manag. 146, 337–345.
Reed, M.S., Moxey, A., Prager, K., Hanley, N., Skates, J., Bonn, A., Evans, C.D., Glenk, K.,
Thomson, K., 2014a. Improving the link between payments and the provision of
ecosystem services in agri-environment schemes. Ecosyst. Serv. 9, 44–53. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.06.008.
Rigal, S., Dakos, V., Alonso, H., Aunin¸ˇ
s, A., Benk˝
o, Z., Brotons, L., Chodkiewicz, T.,
Chylarecki, P., de Carli, E., del Moral, J.C., Doms
¸a, C., Escandell, V., Fontaine, B.,
Foppen, R., Gregory, R., Harris, S., Herrando, S., Husby, M., Ieronymidou, C.,
Jiguet, F., Kennedy, J., Klvaˇ
nov´
a, A., Kmecl, P., Kuczy´
nski, L., Kurlaviˇ
cius, P.,
Kålås, J.A., Lehikoinen, A., Lindstr¨
om, Å., Lorrilli`
ere, R., Moshøj, C., Nellis, R.,
Noble, D., Eskildsen, D.P., Paquet, J.-Y., P´
elissi´
e, M., Pladevall, C., Portolou, D.,
Reif, J., Schmid, H., Seaman, B., Szabo, Z.D., Sz´
ep, T., Florenzano, G.T.,
Teufelbauer, N., Trautmann, S., van Turnhout, C., Vermouzek, Z., Vikstrøm, T.,
Voˇ
ríˇ
sek, P., Weiserbs, A., Devictor, V., 2023. Farmland practices are driving bird
population decline across Europe. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 120, e2216573120 https://
doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216573120.
Roche, B., Farruggia, A., Pousin, M., Riga, P., Chataigner, C., Boutifard, V., Prieur, M.,
Roux, P., Cooke, A.S., Rivero, M.J., 2022. The maraichine cattle breed supports
breeders and researchers in the Atlantic Coastal Marshlands. Rumin. 2(2), Artic. 2.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ruminants2020011.
Rouet-Leduc, J., Pe’er, G., Moreira, F., Bonn, A., Helmer, W., Shahsavan Zadeh, S.A.A.,
Zizka, A., van der Plas, F., 2021. Effects of large herbivores on re regimes and
wildre mitigation. J. Appl. Ecol. 58 (12), 2690–2702. https://doi.org/10.1111/
1365-2664.13972.
Ryschawy, J., Dumont, B., Therond, O., Donnars, C., Hendrickson, J., Benoit, M.,
Duru, M., 2019. Review: an integrated graphical tool for analysing impacts and
services provided by livestock farming. Animal 13 (8), 1760–1772. https://doi.org/
10.1017/S1751731119000351.
Sahm, H., Sanders, J., Nieberg, H., Behrens, G., Kuhnert, H., Strohm, R., Hamm, U.,
2013. Reversion from organic to conventional agriculture: a review. Renew. Agric.
Food Syst. 28 (3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170512000117.
Salda˜
na, J., 2013. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Sage.
Scown, M.W., Brady, M.V., Nicholas, K.A., 2020. Billions in misspent EU agricultural
subsidies could support the sustainable development goals. One Earth 3 (2),
237–250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.011.
Smith, Jonathan, A., Jarman, M., Osborn, M., 1999. Doing interpretative
phenomenological analysis qualitativ health psychology. Qual. Health Psychol.
218–240.
Sutherland, W.J., Dicks, L.V., Ockendon, N., Petrovan, S.O., Smith, R.K., 2019. What
Works in Conservation. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.
Takagi, S., Miyashita, T., 2014. Scale and system dependencies of indirect effects of large
herbivores on phytophagous insects: a meta-analysis. Popul. Ecol. 56 (3), 435–445.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-014-0441-6.
Thompson, P.B., 2007. Agricultural sustainability: what it is and what it is not. Int. J.
Agric. Sustain. 5 (1), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735903.2007.9684809.
Ustaoglu, E., Collier, M.J., 2018. Farmland abandonment in Europe: an overview of
drivers, consequences, and assessment of the sustainability implications. Environ.
Rev. 26 (4), 396–416. https://doi.org/10.1139/ER-2018-0001.
Verdú, J.R., Lobo, J.M., S´
anchez-Pi˜
nero, F., Gallego, B., Numa, C., Lumaret, J.P.,
Cortez, V., Ortiz, A.J., Tonelli, M., García-Teba, J.P., Rey, A., Rodríguez, A.,
Dur´
an, J., 2018. Ivermectin residues disrupt dung beetle diversity, soil properties
and ecosystem functioning: an interdisciplinary eld study. Sci. Total Environ. 618
(October 2017), 219–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.331.
Westerink, J., Jongeneel, R., Polman, N., Prager, K., Franks, J., Dupraz, P.,
Mettepenningen, E., 2017. Collaborative governance arrangements to deliver
spatially coordinated agri-environmental management. Land Use Policy 69,
176–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.LANDUSEPOL.2017.09.002.
Whitmarsh, L., Poortinga, W., Capstick, S., 2021. Behaviour change to address climate
change. Curr. Opin. Psychol. 42, 76–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
copsyc.2021.04.002.
Wilbur, A., 2013. Growing a radical ruralism: back-to-the-Land as practice and Ideal.
Geogr. Compass 7 (2), 149–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12023.
Wilson, G.A., Hart, K., 2001. Farmer participation in agri-environmental schemes:
towards conservation-oriented thinking? Sociologia Rural. 41 (2), 254–274. https://
doi.org/10.1111/1467-9523.00181.
Wilson, T.D., 1997. Information behaviour: an interdisciplinary perspective. Inf. Process.
Manag. 33 (4), 551–572. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-4573(97)00028-9.
Ziegler, R., Balzac-Arroyo, J., H¨
olsgens, R., Holzgreve, S., Lyon, F., Spangenberg, J.H.,
Thapa, P.P., 2022. Social innovation for biodiversity: a literature review and
research challenges. Ecol. Econ. 193, 107336 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ecolecon.2021.107336.
J. Rouet-Leduc et al.
