Which factors and incentives influence the intention to adopt precision agricultural technologies?

Precision agricultural technologies (PAT) promise an approach to agricultural production whichboth enhances productivity and minimises environmental herm. Despite promising economic gains from PAT, uptake within Europe is currently low. We explore the factors behind adoption and non-adoption of PAT using a survey of 971 European farmers, focusing on the role of incentives influencing adoption. We examine current non-adopters' intentions for uptake PAT and current adopters intentions to uptake more PAT. We augment past behavioural models applied to PAT uptake by examining the effect of financial and non-financial incentives and attitudes towards payoffs of the technology. We apply a zero-inflated Poisson regression. Results indicate that non-adopters are distinct from adopters and more favourable to financial and non-financial incentives, whereas adopters support incentives around only a limited set of incentives. Attitudinal differences towards certainty of outcome and belief in the payback also emerge between these two groups. These are further explored qualitatively. The results indicate that a gradient of adoption is occurring with specific groups of farmers identifying particular needs but also responding to differing incentives. Recognition of these differences at policy level could lead to cost-effective interventions which maximise uptake, generate returns to farmers and meet policy desires for sustainable agricultural production. Acknowledgement :