Theses and Dissertations Collection

Sustainable practices in the agricultural sector have become a prerequisite for operating in current markets as well as a source for building and sustaining a competitive advantage through better market positioning. Producers and processors in the agricultural sector have to make various decisions on the adoption of sustainable practices, whereby their choices and behaviour are affected by different types of norms: social and personal norms. This article examines the influence of social norms on the expected economic, social, and personal rewards, that may drive producers towards the adoption of sustainable practices. We have developed a framework in which we distinguish between two types of social norms: horizontal norms (reliant on peer influence) and vertical norms (imposed by transactional and hierarchical relationships). We focus on horizontal, vertical, and personal norms and analyze its impact on expected economic, social, and personal motives by using Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) Model. Result from personal interviews with 164 hog producers show that horizontal social norms have a positive influence on both social and economic motives of farmers whereas vertical social norms have positive influence only on the farmer’s social motives. In addition, personal norms have a significant positive relationship with personal motives.