The perceived benefits and costs of sustainability practices in California viticulture

摘要: ResultsFigure 1 shows the practices where perceived economic benefits outweigh the costs, ranked in terms of their environmental benefits. The practices at the top are likely to be adopted by growers because they provide economic benefits, and give the biggest" bang for the buck" in terms of environmental benefits. For 15 practices evaluated in both surveys, Figure 2 shows the average perceived benefits from the outreach survey on the horizontal axis and the proportion of SWP growers who adopted practices for different reasons or perceived a particular result on the vertical axis. Practices with higher perceived economic benefits also have higher proportions of SWP growers who adopted the practice to increase productivity and have seen increased yields. Practices with higher perceived environmental benefits also have higher proportions of SWP growers who adopted the practice for environmental reasons and perceived a beneficial environmental impact. Figure 3 shows how the perceived costs of a practice tend to increase as the level of uncertainty increases, while the perceived benefits (both economic and environmental) tend to decrease. Uncertainty is measured as the proportion of outreach respondents answering" don't know" when asked to evaluate a practice. Uncertainty is a barrier to practice adoption because the perceived cost/benefit ratio will decrease for practices where growers are uncertain about their effectiveness. Figure 3 also shows that energy and management planning have some of the highest levels of uncertainty, while pest, disease, and weed management practices are typically lower in uncertainty. This result …