Ecological Values, Green Attitudes, and Norms: VBN Pathways to Farmers' Adoption of Sustainable Practices ( SDGs 12, 13, 15)

This paper extends the VBN model by disaggregating ecological cognitive values into provisioning, regulating, and cultural values and incorporates green attitude as a mediator to understand why farmers adopt pro‐environmental behavior in responding to the demands of sustainable development. A comprehensive, structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 1400 educated agricultural respondents in the upper, central, and lower parts of Punjab. The main elements of the VBN model and their interactions across constructs are studied empirically using structural equation modeling, revealing that every aspect of the ecology positively contributes to the formation of the new environmental paradigm, which greatly influences farmers' awareness of potential outcomes and the formation of personal environmental norms. These norms, in turn, positively predict farmers' intention to adopt ALCPs. In line with this, the mediating role of green attitude proved to be the most significant, as it mediates the effects of ecological values through beliefs and norms on farmers' conservation behavior. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that operationalizing value‐specific VBN pathways to conservation intentions to operationalize behavior change towards SDG12 and provide complementary benefits to SDG13 and SDG15. This paper presents practical measures that policymakers can use to develop effective policies that will motivate farmers to adopt conservation‐oriented agricultural practices, with emphasis on the value and attitudes toward ecology as a means of restoring ecological equilibrium and promoting long‐term sustainability in farming.