Pranay Ranjan's Doctoral Scholarly Seminar

A Doctoral Scholarly Seminar will be presented by Pranay Ranjan, PhD Candidate, Environmental Social Sciences. His presentation will be Role of collaborative Processes in Adoption of Agricultural Best Management Practices — Insights from a Field Experiment. This presentation will be held in 333 Kottman Hall.

Involvement of stakeholders in knowledge creation is a topic that has been examined by literature on collaborative environmental planning as well as civic science. Literature on collaborative planning highlights the benefit associated with stakeholder engagement, as it leads to a greater buy-in for implementation and a higher quality plan drawing on more sources of information. Literature on civic science also promotes engagement of stakeholders in the scientific enterprise of identification of research questions and variables, as a way of making science more relevant for real-world problem solving. However, there is little empirical evidence to measure the degree to which such civic science and collaborative approaches actually improve adoption and implementation of agricultural best management practices (Ag. BMPs). Both the approaches argue that stakeholder participation improves adoption. However, is increased adoption due to the product being better or is it due to the collaborative process?  

Based on the literature gap identified above, in this study I isolate the effect of collaborative process on stakeholder adoption of two-stage drainage ditches, a scientifically identified Ag. BMP. This practice has been shown to reduce nutrient runoff, yet its adoption by farmers is uncertain. Specifically, my goal is to find out whether it is the collaborative process that yields a higher stakeholder adoption or it is just because the product, i.e. the extension presentation informed by potential adopters, is better. The data for this study is collected via organizing stakeholder meeting across 3 different counties in Ohio. The data has been collected using pre and post-test survey methodology. Results are more broadly informative about the role of collaboration in adoption of Ag. BMPs, and is relevant for both academicians and practitioners.