From narrative to actions: Theoretical framework for the integration of reframed narratives into New Zealand's agricultural policy

Abstract

New Zealand's food and fibre sector causes manifold environmental problems, ranging from greater levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in freshwater streams to immense biodiversity losses. New Zealand's politics intend to improve its environmental performance in land use practices. The “Moving the Middle” (MtM) research project aims to contribute to this goal by influencing land managers' surrounding systems and system dynamics using leverage points. The aim of the paper is to shed light on the processes of how narratives could lead to actions. This research gap has been largely ignored by idea-based approaches, especially at the empirical level, by not providing observable methods and tools to analyse power. We want to discover how reframed narratives can be effectively transferred into practice using interest and power mechanisms that leverage system changes to actors who influence land use. To answer the question and test our three hypotheses, we developed a narrative definition based on the Actor-centred power approach and adapted the Research-Integration-Utilisation model for knowledge transfer to transfer reframed narratives to actors. Within a pre-test, our results revealed that the existing narratives in New Zealand's land use sector consisted of dominant and shared information. Furthermore, we identified and characterised four different integration forums where reframed narratives could be introduced. From a theoretical perspective, the study bridges the interest-based theory and the idea-based post-positivist-constructivist world views at an empirical-analytical level.