Farmers` agonistic conflict frames regarding river restoration disputes

AbstractMissing cooperation between farmers and nature conservationists is an obstacle to conflictive social-ecological transformation processes of agro-systems in Germany. Conflict psychology research shows that agonistic conflict frames play a crucial role in the parties ’ response to and perception of conflicts. However, the role of conflict frames regarding farmers’ response to conservation conflicts in Germany, which are a recurrent expression of social-ecological transformation, is yet unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we investigate whether farmers ha ve different agonistic conflict frames and whether these are related to their perceptions of specific conflicts. To answer these questions, we developed a cluster analysis of farmers’ attitudes towards conflicts over river restoration in order to find indications for different conflict frames. We used data from a telephone survey from 2021 that was conducted with 300 farmers on the topic of river restoration conflicts. We captured conflict frames using four categories: rejection of others’ attitudes, perceived threat, perceived integrated potential, and delegitimization. In the second and third steps, we looked for differences between the groups with regard to the perception of concrete conflict and economic factors. The results of this explorative study show that it is possible to distinguish six agonistic conflict frames within the four categories. Moreover, the six groups show dif ferences in how they per...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - Category: Food Science Source Type: research