The role of factors that influence the adoption of the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative-Emissions Reduction Fund: a mixed methods study

The Australian government established the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) in 2011, and by 2014 it was merged into the newly introduced Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). The aim of the CFI-ERF was to encourage the abatement of greenhouse gasses (GHG) from different sectors of the economy (e.g. energy efficiency, transport and the land sector), and to meet Australia's Kyoto Protocol (KP) emissions reduction target. The potential for GHG abatement in the Australian land sector (farming/agriculture and forestry) presents an excellent opportunity for the development of carbon farming projects while providing other crucial environmental/ecosystem benefits. This thesis investigates the role that demography, knowledge, motivation, capacity and barriers (DKMCB) play in the adoption of the CFI-ERF/carbon sequestratoin activities from an Australian landholders perspective. A methodological framework was developed to explore the influence of DKMCB factors on adopting the initiative. The study employed a mixed methods sequential explanatory research design which comprised two phases: a quantitative and a qualitative. The quantitative phase used a survey questionnaire addressed to landholders Australia wide: 214 participants completed the questionnaire. The qualitative phase used in-depth, semi-structured interviews targeting only adopters of the policy. Seven of thirteen adopters – identified through the survey form employed in the first phase – accepted the invitation to take part in the interviews. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, proposed in 1962, provided the conceptual framing for this research. The DOI seeks to explain how and why intended adopters implement some new ideas and reject others. The DOI claims that the uptake of innovations, among other factors, depends on the demographic characteristics of the target population (e.g. age, gender, education level and occupation) and their networks, the features of the proposed innovation and the channels through which innovations are communicated. The ...