Indonesia, as the world’s major palm oil producer, has promoted the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification to sustain its global industrial competitiveness and address growing international environmental pressures. Despite being formally introduced in 2011, smallholder participation in ISPO certification remains critically low. In response, the Indonesian government enacted a mandatory ISPO compliance policy, with a transitional phase, for smallholders. This study examines the behavioral predictors of ISPO adoption intention and readiness among two categories of oil palm smallholders in Riau Province, Indonesia: scheme smallholders, who cooperate with firms under nucleus partnership, and independent smallholders, who rely on open market channels with minimal institutional support. Data were collected from 300 smallholders and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Multi-Group Analysis (PLS-MGA), drawing on an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework that incorporates environmental awareness (EA) and collective membership participation (COL) as additional constructs. The findings show that behavioral intention is the influential predictor associated with ISPO adoption readiness across both groups (β = 0.376 for independent; β = 0.229 for scheme smallholders), while perceived behavioral control (PBC) significantly influences readiness among scheme smallholders (β = 0.344), but not among independent smallholders (β = 0.097), reflecting the structural capacity constraints faced by the independent group, particularly land legality. Environmental awareness positively shapes adoption intention among scheme smallholders (β = 0.126) but shows no significant effect among independent smallholders. Collective farmer group membership consistently enhances both adoption intention and readiness across both groups, emerging as the most universally actionable driver of ISPO compliance. These findings underscore the need for differentiated policy interventions, particularly targeted structural support for independent smallholders in terms of land legalization, certification subsidies, and field-based capacity building, to ensure equitable and effective implementation of mandatory ISPO certification.
Pratama et al. (Tue,) studied this question.