1,720,961 research outputs found
A Trans-Theoretical Model for Farmers’ perceived Usefulness of Digital Risk Management Tools – A Case Study from Germany
Digital risk management tools (RMTs) are promising to help farmers manage risk. However, these recently developed tools are still unexplored and hardly used by farmers. This study is the first to investigate how German farmers perceive the usefulness of digital RMTs and which factors influence them. A novel modification of the trans-theoretical model was made to determine farmers’ perceived usefulness gradually. The regression results show that, on average, farmers perceive digital RMTs as potentially useful. Perceptions are positively influenced by a higher level of education, full-time employment on the farm, use of mobile devices and a higher perceived importance of digital tools. The study contributes to the literature by investigating the extent to which farmers are willing to accept the combination of digitisation and risk management. The results are of interest to policy makers involved in digital agriculture and to agricultural tool providers, as they offer first insights into farmers’ acceptance of digital RMTs. Researchers benefit from the successfully applied trans-theoretical model fitting
Who Are the Farmers Participating in a Carbon Sequestration Program? Results of a Discrete Choice Experiment in Germany
ABSTRACT Agricultural soils offer great potential for carbon sequestration through humus formation. One way to motivate farmers to build up humus is through humus programs. These are still at an early stage of development, poorly explored, and the number of participating farmers is low. Our aim is to explain the heterogeneity of farmers' willingness to participate in humus programs by typologizing them according to different design preferences and socioeconomic backgrounds. To this end, we conducted a survey with German farmers including a discrete choice experiment and questions about environmental awareness, profit orientation and farm characteristics. We summarized farmers' attitudes towards for example, climate change with a factor analysis and included the results into the latent class model we used to analyze the discrete choice experiment. The farmers surveyed can be divided into four classes. The results show that the classes differ in the farmers' preferences for the characteristics of a humus program, for example, type of reference value and program duration, and according to the factors of the factor analysis, for example, advocacy of humus programs. The classes distinguish between disinterested and motivated farmers, farmers focusing on safe money and farmers focusing on quick money. With this study, we improve the understanding of farmers' acceptance of humus programs, which is essential before starting targeted (political) efforts
Agricultural soils in climate change mitigation: comparing action-based and results-based programmes for carbon sequestration
Abstract Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is a major challenge for today’s society. A great source of potential for greenhouse gas sequestration is beneath our feet: agricultural soil. By accumulating soil organic carbon in soil, farmers can sequester carbon dioxide and simultaneously reach soils more resilient to extreme weather events. To encourage farmers to build up humus and thus sequester carbon, some humus programmes have been developed by non-governmental organisations. In this regard, action-based reward systems are on their way to challenging the established results-based approaches. Against this background, we analyse how action-based and results-based approaches, as well as other crucial features of humus programmes, affect farmers’ willingness to participate in a humus programme. We conducted a Discrete-Choice-Experiment and analysed it using a mixed logit model. The results show that farmers have a statistically significant preference for action-based humus programmes, shorter programme durations, higher incentives, and an annual and government-funded payment. More specifically, farmer participation is twice as likely if humus formation is rewarded for action rather than results. The willingness-to-accept calculation indicates that a results-based humus programme would cost the funding agency about €20 more per ton of carbon dioxide sequestered in the soil. Above all, humus programmes with an action-based approach and annual payments would increase farmers’ willingness to participate. Our results contribute to the development of targeted humus programmes and policies to increase carbon sequestration in agricultural soils
Farmers’ Willingness to Participate in a Carbon Sequestration Program – A Discrete Choice Experiment
Abstract
Farmers can counteract global warming by drawing carbon dioxide from the air into agricultural soils by building up humus. Humus programs were developed to motivate farmers for even more humus formation (= carbon sequestration) through an additional financial incentive. These programs are still at an early stage of development, which is why the number of participating farmers and research work is still low. This study is the first to analyze the willingness of German farmers to participate in hypothetical humus programs. The results of a discrete choice experiment show that a (higher) threshold for the payout of the premium, regional (rather than field-specific) reference values, and the risk of repayment clearly discourage farmers from participating. Program providers must more than double the premium (set at around 240 € per hectare and 0.1% humus increase) to maintain farmers’ willingness to participate despite a payout threshold. Regional reference values and an additional premium/repayment system would lead to an increase in the premium of around 20 € per hectare in order to keep the willingness to participate at the same level. The motivation to build up humus, the desire to maximize subsidies, and a higher livestock density have a positive influence on farmers’ decision to participate. Farm size and risk attitude have an impact on farmers’ preferences for program design. The study is relevant for policymakers and non-governmental organizations concerned with carbon management, as our findings highlight pathways for efficient, targeted designs of humus programs and carbon sequestration policies
How to reduce the carbon footprint of the agricultural sector? Factors influencing farmers’ decision to participate in carbon sequestration programs
Funder:
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaf
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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