Sowing seeds for the future

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

Agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change, but a crucial industry for meeting food and energy demands. In much of the world, the majority of farms are family-owned, with one or two main decision-makers.

Knowing what we know from social and environmental psychology, how can farmers be encouraged to do the most ecologically sustainable practices on their farms? And what can be done with insights from this research? These questions are explored in three themes—the development and influence of personal norms, attitude-behaviour consistency, and energisation and goal pursuit.

Finally, Dale Shaffer-Morrison will outline how these behavioural insights feed into AI models of food-energy-water systems to predict the impact of changes in agricultural behaviour on the environment, as well as on-the-ground measures of water quality.