Journal of Rural Studies最新文献

{"title":"Regulatory stress lowers farmer well-being as much as financial factors and exposure to extreme weather","authors":"Meredith T. Niles ,&nbsp;Pike Stahlmann-Brown","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103795","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103795","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent evidence suggests that farmers face high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, which have been associated with lower well-being and life satisfaction outcomes. While factors such as finances, climate, demographics, and social issues have been linked to these outcomes and associated interventions, little research has focused on the relationship between government regulations and their implementation with stress, especially beyond single farm types. To address this gap, we utilize survey data from more than 3400 commercial farmers, foresters, and growers (i.e. “farmers”) across New Zealand to examine how regulatory stress impacts well-being and life satisfaction vis-à-vis financial, climate, demographic, and social factors. We find that the majority of farmers perceive regulations – especially those pertaining to climate change and the environment – as stressful, but that their implementation (as opposed to the regulations themselves) are most correlated with lower well-being and life satisfaction outcomes. Importantly, stress associated with regulations and their implementation has a similar or in some cases larger association with well-being and life satisfaction than failing to make a profit or having been adversely affected by a recent, large, and economically damaging cyclone or extreme flooding. Finally, we observe that while some aspects of regulation and their implementation is consistently and negatively correlated with our three measures of well-being, certain regulations are negatively correlated with current well-being and life satisfaction yet positively correlated with future life satisfaction. That is, stress associated with certain regulations today is correlated with higher anticipated life satisfaction in the future. While we cannot establish causality in these results, we discuss how use of boundary organizations, reducing paperwork burden, and policy review processes could potentially be used to reduce regulatory stress and improve farmer well-being and life satisfaction in the short-term.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103795"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144687232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inclusion and understanding of farmers’ perspectives in policies and policymaking for greenhouse gas removal","authors":"Charlotte Li Flodin ,&nbsp;Johanna Liljenfeldt ,&nbsp;Wiebren Johannes Boonstra","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103789","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103789","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The European Commission aims to facilitate a just transition towards climate neutrality in 2050 (no net greenhouse gas emissions) and acknowledges agriculture's potential to contribute to greenhouse gas removal (GGR). But the sector is currently struggling with economic profitability and a declining farmers' population. Farmers, moreover, often tend to be critical of sustainability and environmental policies, which negatively influences their willingness to engage with GGR. Based on insights from justice theory we assume that farmers' potential reservations towards GGR can be mitigated by ensuring that their perspectives are included and inform the design and execution of GGR policies. But to what extent do policymakers understand and consider the inclusion of farmers' perspectives on GGR? To explore this question we analyse key EU and Swedish GGR policy documents as well as interviews with policymakers against the procedural justice criteria of voice, transparency, impartiality and consistency. The analysis identifies the following challenges that influence the uptake of farmers' perspectives in GGR measures: (1) the legitimacy of farmers' perspectives are affected by the ways in which policymakers perceive the <em>representativeness</em> of intermediaries; (2) the <em>timing of inclusion</em> of different intermediaries affects meaningful inclusion of farmers' perspectives in GGR policies; and finally (3) intermediaries and other stakeholders have different experience and capacities for navigating the complex and opaque body of policies, policymaking processes and competing interests (together referred to as a <em>policy maze</em>). Based on these results we conclude that meeting these three challenges can help to overcome farmers' scepticism against environmental policy and, as such, strengthen the effectiveness of GGR measures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103789"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144687233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Factors influencing farmer participation in bottom-up collaborative agri-environment-climate measures","authors":"Menko Koch ,&nbsp;Sebastian Lakner ,&nbsp;Annika L. Hass ,&nbsp;Jule M. Huber ,&nbsp;Tobias Plieninger ,&nbsp;Catrin Westphal ,&nbsp;Stefan Schüler","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103804","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103804","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Agri-environment-climate measures (AECMs) that focus on spatial coordination at the landscape level and the joint working of different actors represent a novel policy approach in Europe. As participation in AECMs generally depends on farmers' motivations and preferences, AECM design needs to consider their perspectives. In this respect, bottom-up collaborative AECMs become increasingly important, as they are driven by actor engagement and interaction. To investigate the factors influencing farmer participation in such approaches and assess their perceived importance, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with 36 farmers in northern Germany. At the time of the interviews, the farmers had recently decided whether to participate in a novel bottom-up collaborative AECM initiative. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. We found that farmers' attitudes towards nature and administrative aspects were most relevant. Economics, farmers' curiosity, and social influences also played important roles. While many of these factors were shaped by past experiences, we identified characteristics specific to collaborative AECMs that influence farmers' decision-making. For example, spatial coordination, farmer-to-farmer communication, expert help or expected conflicts with others were found to have either a positive or negative impact. To increase participation, policymakers and collaborative AECM initiatives should utilise the positively perceived characteristics as levers. For instance, this could involve combining ecologically effective measures with non-monetary benefits, such as support structures and public outreach, as well as providing opportunities for farmers to exchange ideas and share success stories. However, such approaches should also take into account farmers’ level of experience with cooperation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103804"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144694553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidies on the sustainable and intensive utilization of cultivated land: A perspective on agricultural machinery socialization services","authors":"Yajuan Zhou ,&nbsp;Lijie He ,&nbsp;Xinli Ke ,&nbsp;Ershen Zhang ,&nbsp;Jinwei Zhu ,&nbsp;Aiwen Lin","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103798","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103798","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The sustainable and intensive utilization (SIU) of cultivated land is key to achieving food security and promoting ecological balance at the national level. Agricultural machinery purchase subsidy (AMPS) is one of the agricultural policies with the largest capital investment involving the widest range of subsidies in China. It has both theoretical and practical significance to explore whether AMPS can stimulate the SIU of cultivated land. However, most existing studies investigate the influence of AMPS on agricultural yield and income, while the mechanism by which it promotes the transition to the SIU of cultivated land remains unclear. Given this, based on elasticity theory, this study constructed the impact mechanism of AMPS on the SIU and used the county data of the Huang–Huai–Hai Plain to conduct an empirical test. Emergy analysis showed that high levels of the SIU were concentrated in the central part of Hebei, and the inter-regional differences showed a decreasing trend over the years. Basic regression results indicated that AMPS contributed to improving the utilization ratio of natural resources, the utilization ratio of production factors, and emergy value productivity while reducing environmental load pressure, thus promoting the transition toward the SIU of cultivated land. The conclusion remained valid when the instrumental variables approach was applied for robustness testing after considering the endogeneity issue. The mediation mechanism test showed that AMPS improved the SIU of cultivated land by promoting the development of agricultural machinery socialization services (AMSS), which had a partial mediating effect. This study affirms the importance of fostering AMSS in promoting the SIU of cultivated land through agricultural subsidies. It is expected to provide innovative ideas and practical experience for the agricultural sector in advancing the SIU of cultivated land.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103798"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144678844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring the relationship between land abandonment and landscape identity in traditional cultural landscapes: the case of Castelsaraceno, Italy","authors":"Kyle Jewell ,&nbsp;Bárbara Soriano ,&nbsp;Luuk Fleskens ,&nbsp;Giovanni Quaranta ,&nbsp;Rosanna Salvia ,&nbsp;Ana Iglesias","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103802","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103802","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Traditional cultural landscapes are often valued for their multifunctionality and are increasingly being viewed as models for informing sustainable land management and landscape planning. However, land abandonment in Europe has contributed to the gradual decline and disappearance of traditional cultural landscapes. Although the impacts of land abandonment on traditional cultural landscapes have been widely examined from biophysical and socioeconomic perspectives, there is a knowledge gap in the study of the impacts from sociocultural ones. This paper contributes to filling this gap by exploring the relationship between land abandonment and landscape identity. To achieve this, we study the case of Castelsaraceno (Italy), a town which has historically boasted a rich agro-pastoral system and shepherding tradition, as an example of a region characterized by traditional cultural landscapes that has experienced sustained trends of land abandonment since the mid-20th century. Interviews were conducted with shepherds to understand their perceptions of land abandonment drivers, traditional land management practices, and social identity dynamics. Our findings highlight how land abandonment is perceived to have occurred predominantly through a lack of generational renewal, though underpinned by several other interacting factors which are both regionally- and site-specific, spanning to include economic conditions as well as rising social stigma and changing family dynamics. These land abandonment drivers have led to the decline of the traditional agro-pastoral practices in Castelsaraceno and to substantial changes in shepherds’ landscape identity. These changes are represented through a higher sense of disaffection towards the landscape, as well as a general sense of value loss. Amongst growing interest in land abandonment as an opportunity for novel rural development paradigms, such as nature restoration and nature-based tourism, we argue that future research and policy development concerning landscape planning should more thoroughly take past landscape dynamics into account, human experiences, values, and legacy knowledge upon which traditional cultural landscapes have been founded and sustained. Accounting for these elements can help guide transformative change and inform more sustainable and culturally sensitive landscape management planning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103802"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What's place got to do with it? Collaboration among civil society actors in northern rural Sweden","authors":"Sophie Kolmodin","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103797","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103797","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Existing theories on collaboration within civil society frequently treat collaboration as detached from the specific geographical and social places where it occurs. In other words, collaborative theories tend to understate the significance of local context. Contributing to the discussion on rural civil society collaboration, this article explores how collaboration within civil society can be understood by adopting a relational perspective on place. Drawing on interviews with civil society actors, both those affiliated with an organisation and not, in northern rural Sweden—the most sparsely populated region in Europe—and using refugee reception as an empirical case, this article highlights how collaboration needs to be understood in relation to place, distance, and peripheralization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103797"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lingering social infrastructure: A study of Apennine villages and their postal offices","authors":"Borys Cieślak","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103800","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103800","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many villages located in the central Apennines in the Italian region of Abruzzo have been suffering from depopulation, decline of sheepherding economy, amenity desertification, and earthquakes, notably the one of 2009. Postal offices are often the last state institutions which remain in these places. By using the community economies approach and the method of reading for economic difference, this paper seeks to draw attention to the emotional and caring work of the postmasters and to explicate how they help abate isolation, improve wellbeing and provide a sense of citizenship to the rural communities they serve. In doing so, it attends to the absences in the conventional regulatory economics discourse of postal offices and redescribes them as a universal, even if lingering, redistributive social infrastructure. It also discusses the unacknowledged costs of the emotional and caring labor of postal employees which evade the traditional economic purview and suggests possible policy interventions. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork (participant observation, interviews and desk research).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103800"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144665540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lifescapes of emotional labour in farming support organisations: An exploration using visual methods","authors":"Rachael Aka,&nbsp;Gareth Enticott","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103806","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103806","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103806"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Local food consumption and a sense of rural: The role of “rural connections”","authors":"Rajlakshmi Banerjee ,&nbsp;Barry Quinn","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103790","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103790","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using place attachment as a theoretical lens, this study seeks to explore how attitudes towards local food consumption are intertwined with constructions of rurality. Set in Northern Ireland, 25 qualitative interviews were conducted across rural and urban locations to recount the stories and recollections of individuals around local food and rurality. The findings reveal that a sense of rurality is constructed through various connections to rural areas and rural life, which derive from family connections, emotional ties, community support, and ethical and sustainable values. The findings also question the belief that urban consumers are generally less predisposed towards local food and the rural economy than their rural counterparts. Indeed, for urban-based individuals, consumption and engagement with local food acts as a tangible and symbolic medium through which they experience, interpret, and reaffirm their relationship with place.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103790"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144657282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regional relationship between urban-rural economic inequality and carbon intensity in China's counties: Unveiling the trade-off","authors":"Ming Gao ,&nbsp;Xi Tu ,&nbsp;Yao Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103799","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103799","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The relationship between economic inequality and carbon intensity in emerging economies remains a subject of ongoing debate. By utilizing multiple satellite datasets, this study examines over 2000 county-level regions in China through the calculation of the Dagum-Gini coefficient and the application of fixed-effects regression analysis. The results demonstrate that higher urban–rural inequality are correlated with lower carbon intensity, particularly in rural areas of less-developed counties, thereby underscoring a potential trade-off between economic inequality and carbon emissions. Mechanism analysis reveals that this relationship is predominantly mediated by differences in energy consumption and industrial structure. These findings provide valuable insights for governments aiming to reconcile urban–rural economic inequalities with low-carbon development objectives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 103799"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144657281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}