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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Cynthia Olumba, Professor Guy Garrod, Dr Francisco ArealORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Sustainable land management (SLM) practices are important for tackling agricultural land degradation. This study investigates the association between farmers’ time preferences and their adoption of SLM practices (agroforestry, terracing, and land fallow practices) with intertemporal benefits, and further documents the moderating role of land tenure security in this relationship. The analysis in the paper is based on data from a survey of 480 farmers in south-east Nigeria, complemented by semi-structured interviews. Farmers’ time preferences were elicited using both a survey and experiments with hypothetical payouts. Land tenure was conceptualised as a composite concept to suit the legally pluralistic context of the study area. This study found that many of the sampled farmers have high discount rates. The result further shows that farmers’ time preferences are negatively associated with their adoption of agroforestry and land fallow practices. Moreover, the result shows that both legal and de facto tenure security encourage the adoption of SLM practices. Other factors influencing the adoption of SLM practices include gender, household size, education, credit constraints, marital status, risk attitude, farming experience, and farm characteristics (e.g., erosion problems and steepness of slope). Furthermore, this study found that the security-enhancing effect of land tenure security (de facto) can alleviate the negative influence of time preferences on farmers’ adoption of SLM practices. The findings suggest that farmers with higher discount rates, who have secure tenure rights to land, are more likely to adopt SLM practices, compared to similar farmers without tenure security.
Author(s): Olumba CN, Garrod GD, Areal F
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Sustainability
Year: 2024
Volume: 16
Issue: 5
Print publication date: 21/02/2024
Online publication date: 21/02/2024
Acceptance date: 28/01/2024
Date deposited: 27/02/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2071-1050
Publisher: MDPI
URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/su16051747
DOI: 10.3390/su16051747
Data Access Statement: The survey data presented in this study are available on request from the first author. The interview participants did not consent to their data being shared.
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