Quantifying the influence of sociocognitive factors on land use changes in agricultural regions: Application of the social cognitive theory

Agricultural lands provide various ecosystem services such as food production, carbon sequestration, preventing soil erosion and pollination. Today, some farmers are changing their agricultural lands to residential houses due to population growth, migration, tourism development, and reduced profit from agricultural activities. Maintaining agricultural land use and accepting governmental policies in this regard depends on the voluntary acceptance of farmers. Therefore, understanding the psychological factors affecting the behavior of farmers will provide valuable information for land use management. This paper aims to use social cognitive theory to investigate the sociopsychological factors that influence farmers' behavior toward agricultural land use conservation behavior in the Jouybar region, which is located in northern Iran. The required data were collected by conducting interviews with 200 male farmers using random sampling. The collected data have been analyzed using structural equation modeling and the partial least squares method. According to the results, the social cognitive theory can satisfactorily explain farmers' behavior in terms of agricultural land use conservation. The developed behavioral model explains 69 % and 71 % of farmers' intention and behavior variance, respectively. The results illustrate that some strategies can help control agricultural land use change and reduce its adverse effects on ecosystem services. For example, increasing public awareness through advertising campaigns, imposing penalties against any unauthorized land use change, and enlisting the support of credible and influential farming community members to encourage others to conserve agricultural land use can be suggested for controlling the land use change in the study area.