Sense of place and conservation behavior in a Midwestern agricultural landscape
Abstract
Nonpoint source pollution is widely identified as the greatest threat to water quality in the United States. Much of this pollution comes from working agricultural landscapes, where rain and floodwaters regularly wash valuable topsoil and chemical inputs into rivers and creeks. Though the federal government spends billions of dollars every year to address this problem through Farm Bill conservation programs, we have yet to see the landscape-level changes to management practices that are needed to effectively tackle this issue. Previous research has attempted to identify explanatory factors for conservation practice and program enrollment, but more work is needed to better understand management decisions in specific geo-spatial contexts. Sense of place provides one theoretical approach to accomplish this objective. This study uses mail survey methodology to test a sense of place scale in a Midwestern agricultural landscape. Factor and principal component analysis suggests sense of place functions as a one-dimensional construct in this setting. However, two subcomponents identified in other studies (place attachment and place identity) have significant effects on conservation behavior where the overall construct of sense of place does not. Insights are gained into the applicability of sense of place theory to a working landscape, as well as the psychological factors contributing to agricultural conservation behavior.
Degree
M.S.
Advisors
Prokopy, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Social research|Agriculture|Natural Resource Management
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