Abstract

The agricultural sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is now widely accepted that GHG emissions from agriculture need to decline, and the adoption of climate change mitigation measures by farmers is seen as a key step to achieve this. In general, information provision is important to facilitate uptake of new practices, but its effectiveness is often below expectations. In this paper, we explore means to increase engagement of farmers with climate change mitigation information. Specifically, we assess the effect of framing of messages on engagement with the information, knowledge and stated intentions to implement GHG mitigation measures. To this end, we conducted an online field experiment with over 500 livestock farmers in Ireland, where participants were randomly allocated into one of the two treatments or control group. One treatment generated interest by stressing the need to act due to concern about the reputation of the industry, while the second treatment was based on loss aversion. We hypothesized that framing will increase engagement with the information, and lead to better knowledge and higher stated intentions to change farm practices. Our findings show that framing significantly affects information engagement, but not in the anticipated direction. In addition, framing does not significantly impact knowledge or stated intentions. We also find that increased information engagement is positively associated with better knowledge, which is also robust to omitted variable bias. Our findings have important implications for advisory programmes focused on agricultural climate change mitigation.

Practical information