Author's personal copy Motivations for implementation of ecological compensation areas on Swiss lowland farms Robert Home * , Oliver Balmer, Ingrid Jahrl, Matthias Stolze, Lukas Pfiffner Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Ackerstrasse, CH-5070 Frick, Switzerland Keywords: Ecological compensation Farmer motivation Biodiversity Persuasion strategies Direct payments Agro-environmental program abstract Swiss farmers receive subsidies for reserving ecological compensation areas on their farms with the aim of encouraging biodiversity, but recent studies have found that the existing system of incentives is insufficient to halt biodiversity loss in the Swiss agricultural landscape. An effective targeting of in- centives is needed to motivate farmers to implement conservation measures on farmland. The primary aim of this study is to identify the motivations that contribute to the intention of Swiss farmers to engage in conservation on their farms. Fifteen Swiss lowland farmers were interviewed using qualitative in- terviews and their responses to questions about their attitudes toward nature conservation were cat- egorised and classified according to Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour. It was found that the farmers’ identities and their experiences with past nature conservation measures combine with their expectations of direct benefits, such as financial incentives, and their trust that the measures will pro- duce the desired outcomes, to form a behavioural attitude. The sampled Swiss farmers display a strong sense of fairness, which drives them to comply with subjective norms, although they feel torn between a societal expectation to conserve nature and a wish to appear productive to their peers. We conclude by recommending that any changes to the policy framework should be undertaken in a consultative process and that Swiss lowland farmers be allowed the flexibility to implement measures that will produce the best conservation outcomes on their farms. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Agricultural landscapes, especially those with a fine-grained mosaic and low-intensity production systems, were formerly rich in biodiversity (Edwards et al., 1999). In recent decades, many more intensive forms of agricultural production, with an associated decline in semi-natural landscape elements (Robinson and Sutherland, 2002) have led to declining species richness (Billeter et al., 2008). Most EU countries have introduced agro-ecological schemes aimed at protecting biodiversity and making farming more sustainable (Kleijn and Sutherland, 2003). The scheme introduced in Switzerland in 1993 is based around cross compli- ance, with subsidies paid in exchange for proof of ecological per- formance (PEP), and requires that farmers reserve a minimum of seven per cent of their land area as ecological compensation areas (ECAs). Cross compliance is a potentially powerful policy instru- ment (Aviron et al., 2009) because farmers have to meet environmental standards in order to qualify for area-related direct payments. ECAs contribute to the maintenance of the diverse, historically evolved cultural landscape, encourage biodiversity by providing small-scale habitats for plants and animals within that landscape, and contribute to the well-being of the population by providing possibilities for contact with nature (FOEN, 2012). Landscape, biodiversity and public well-being all have the characteristics of public goods and it is usually the task of government to finance the creation of public goods (Friedman, 1990). The Swiss Confederation adopts this role and provides direct payments to farmers to maintain near-natural and valuable habitats in areas of economic agricultural production and to manage sites of low productivity to prevent the spread of woodland and maintain the mosaic-like landscape. The years between 1993 and 2000 saw a large in- crease in the quantity of declared ECAs in Switzerland with the area increasing from 70,000 to 120,000 ha. The PEP scheme was extended in 2001 with the “Environmental Quality Ordinance ” (EQO) that aimed to preserve ecological compensation areas of particular biological quality and included the concept of networking. ECAs in Switzerland mostly consist of extensively managed meadows (70%) and traditional, extensive orchards with * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ41 62 865 7215. E-mail address: robert.home@fibl.org (R. Home). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud 0743-0167/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.12.007 Journal of Rural Studies 34 (2014) 26e36