Pathways to conservation persistence: Psychosocial drivers of durable grasslands following the Conservation Reserve Program

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the largest private lands conservation program in the United States, has contributed substantially to the health of soil, water, and wildlife of the grasslands in the Great Plains of North America. However, the program's limited-term contracts offer no guarantee that the vegetation and associated environmental benefits produced by the program will endure when landowners are no longer enrolled. Through a survey of landowners in the southern Great Plains with current or expired CRP contracts, this study explored the role of five pathways previously linked to behavioral persistence-cognitions, motivations, resources, social influences, and behavioral inertia-in grassland persistence after participation in CRP ends. Among landowners with current CRP contracts, intentions to persist with grassland in the future were correlated with positive program experiences, the perceived ease and desirability of keeping their CRP field in grass, and intrinsic motivations to improve the beauty of their field or its value for wildlife or live-stock. Reported grassland persistence among landowners with expired CRP contracts was additionally correlated with motivations to improve their field's soil and water conditions and the availability of natural and material resources. Across both landowner groups, grassland persistence was negatively associated with the importance of financial motivations in land-owners' decision-making and positively associated with normative influences related to how others manage former CRP land in the area. These insights into the drivers of postprogram landowner behavior provide support for the role of cognitive, motivational, social, resource, and behavioral pathways in the durability of grasslands established through CRP and open multiple programmatic and policy opportunities for promoting enduring benefits for the land, people, and wildlife of the Great Plains.