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Abstract Biodiversity promotion schemes often have limited impact because they fail to connect with farmers’ personal values and beliefs. The effectiveness of such schemes could be enhanced by understanding how farmers’ value systems, including religio-spiritual beliefs, influence their biodiversity-promoting decisions. The aim of this contribution is to explore relationships between farmers’ religio-spirituality and faith and biodiversity-supporting farming decisions, which was addressed with 22 semi-structured interviews with Swiss farmers. Through thematic analysis, values were identified across two main categories: values expressively linked to religio-spirituality and those not expressively linked to religio-spirituality related to biodiversity. This was done to demonstrate the visibility of the religio-spiritually connected values to the values operated in the context of farming behaviour. The findings revealed that religio-spiritual values operated within the context of biodiversity-linked farming behaviour were remaining truthful to design, mercy towards and the rights of creatures, and responsibility and care. These values were operational not only in the personal dimension of the farmers, regardless of their degree of religiosity, but also in the social and business dimensions of the farm enterprise in the context of biodiversity. Thus, religion and spirituality shape farmers’ worldviews, influencing agricultural practices through both internalized non-instrumental values and deliberate instrumental logic.
Sabir et al. (Tue,) studied this question.