Norm-based messaging in agricultural extension: A pilot experiment in pesticide resistance and drainage management

Traditional agricultural extension in the US and elsewhere uses a ‘knowledge transfer’ model focused on disseminating results of public agricultural research to farmers. Yet extension is often tasked with helping farmers solve problems that require collective action, such as pesticide resistance and water management, for which technical information provision alone is often ineffective or even counterproductive. Informed by the study of socioecological systems, we conducted a pilot test of an extension messaging strategy which appealed to heterogeneous farming community norms and values. Among 209 participants in 14 agricultural extension meetings held across eastern North Carolina in 2023, we randomized the content of extension presentations aimed at increasing farmers’ use of non-Bt corn, Zea mays L., refuges to slow insect pests’ evolution of resistance to transgenic Bt corn. Using an incentivized economic game for measuring ‘conditional cooperation’ in common-pool resource management, we elicited participants’ baseline willingness to cooperate (WTC) with their neighbors in a framed vignette about collective control of herbicide-resistant weeds. We also recorded participation in local drainage management organizations (DMOs), which we hypothesized would predict levels of social capital and conditional cooperation. As hypothesized, we confirm that participation in DMOs predicted more cooperative gameplay. Extension presentations with cooperative norm activation v. an information-only control significantly increased Bt refuge planting intentions only for those with lower baseline WTC, contradicting another of our hypotheses. These findings point to the potential effectiveness of tailoring messaging about cooperation and community values in extension communication, using specialists’ on-the-ground knowledge of community-level social capital.