Spatial diffusion of innovations: a spatial analysis of agricultural conservation behaviors in New York State

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Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2024.2353758.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by USDA grant number 2018-67019-27793. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Deidentified data is available upon request.

Ethics approval

This research received ethics approval from the Syracuse University Institutional Review Board, study number 18–128.

Notes

1. The Environmental Protection Agency defines a farm as having a ‘steep slope’ when slope is ≥ 9% (Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research & Development 2023), but the NRCS categories include 0–3% and 3–8%, so we used ≥ 8% as our cutoff.

2. Consistent with the NY farming sector, only 9% of respondents were female, so gender is not included in the regression analysis.

3. 303D waterways are waterways that are reported by the state to the EPA as ‘impaired’ according to the Clean Water Act (Environmental Protection Agency 2015).

4. Because many farms produce more than one commodity, all commodities are coded as binary for whether it was produced in the year prior to the survey.

5. Other sources of information for nutrient management decisions included expected yield, history, soil test results, and magazines. These had to be excluded from the regression models due to multicollinearity.

6. Education is coded as: 1=some formal schooling, 2= high school or equivalent, 3=some college, 4=associate’s or technical degree, 5=bachelor’s degree, 6=postgraduate degree.

7. If the respondent marked that criteria was either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for their nutrient management.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture [2018-67019-27793].

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Schewe

Rebecca Schewe is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Through interdisciplinary partnerships, her research examines how the major social institutions of the state, economy and community structure our human interactions with ecosystems.

Weston Henry Fenner

Weston Henry (Trent) Fenner is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at Syracuse University. His research examines the political economy of the environment, the sociology of culture, and social theory. He is particularly interested in the privatization and commodification of nature, the market’s subordination of nature, and the intrusion of market values into everyday life.

Lidiia Iavoriska

Lidiia Iavorivska is an Assistant Research Professor at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University. Her research specializes in watershed management, biogeochemistry, emerging contaminants, and water quality modeling.

Christa Kelleher

Christa Kelleher is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lafayette College. She specializes in urban hydrology, stream temperature, stream restoration, comparative hydrology, scientific visualization, and hydrology and water resources education.