Understanding changes in reducing pesticide use by farmers: Contribution of the behavioural sciences

Pesticide use in agriculture has serious impacts on the environment, biodiversity and human health. Even though these strong negative impacts have been identified for decades, the reduction of phytosanitary products is becoming increasingly urgent. Agricultural land is a socio-ecological system in which environmental, economic, agronomic and social components are closely linked and interact in a non-linear and complex way. As such, it has become evident that pesticide reduction can only be achieved by jointly considering these different elements of the socio-ecosystem. In this article, we first discuss the behavioural factors involved in changing agricultural practices with a focus on pesticide practices. We then attempt to assess the respective influence of these factors on farming practices. Finally, we analyse how these behavioural factors could be used to induce concrete changes towards the adoption of environmentally friendly practices and question their consideration in future research. To do so, we undertake a literature review: we analyse a wide range of articles using a behavioural science framework. To anchor our work in agricultural reality, we illustrate the review of the behavioural factors using verbatim transcriptions taken from several interviews with farmers. Based on our corpus, we focus on nine articles to better understand the relative influences of these factors in the studies and highlight five case studies to explore the activation of these factors through action levers. We identify fourteen factors operating at three different levels: individual, social and external. These factors likely interact with each other, thus enhancing their effect on the changes in agricultural practices. Some behavioural factors described in this review are not explored in the few articles that attempt to compare their importance, thus rendering our understanding of their relative importance only partial. We observe that some factors are more easily translated into levers for changing pesticide practices, although this depends on the scale of the studies and the object of change under consideration. We believe that the behavioural sciences can provide a better insight into the multiple dynamics at play with regard to the changes in agricultural practices and production systems. We hope that this article will not only strengthen the relevance and use of the behavioural sciences to address these issues but will also allow for a more realistic conceptualisation of farming behaviours in future research. • The agricultural land is a socio-ecosystem where many actors and components coexist and influence the agricultural practices on the territory. • We identify the behavioural factors linked with these components that are involved in changing farming practices. • We highlight and categorise three types of factors, at several levels: individual, social and external, and attempt to rank them. • Some factors are even more relevant for changing farming and pesticides practices, and more easily translated into interventions. • In-depth work on the synergies between these factors and consistent measures are needed in future research.