Promotion of adopting preventive behavioral intention toward biodiversity degradation among Iranian farmers

In recent years, biodiversity in Iran has been exposed to serious threats due to the farmers’ unordinary behaviors, including the extensive use of chemicals, land-use changes, and the destruction of natural habitats. The basic concept of the present research is to discover the underlying constructs of farmers’ intention to conserve biodiversity at the farm level. This research adopts the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and uses its extended version, in which the constructs of moral norms and environmental concerns have been included, as its theoretical framework. In this study, data collection is done by the survey method through a questionnaire that is analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling technique (SEM). The target population consists of all farmers from Bavi County in Khuzestan province in the southwest of Iran. The findings indicated that the variables, including attitude (γ: 0.164 Sig: 0.001), perceived behavioral control (γ: 0.136 Sig: 0.001), subjective norms (γ: 0.278 Sig: 0.001), moral norms (γ: 0.292 Sig: 0.001), and environmental concerns (γ: 0.192 Sig: 0.001), have a significant positive effect on the farmers’ behavioral intention towards biodiversity protection. In addition, it was shown that using the extended version of TPB can improve the present research capacity to explain the farmers' behavioral intention by 22%. Based on the results, moral norms were identified as the main influencing factor, and it was concluded that policymakers can emphasize this construct to promote the safe behaviors for conserving biodiversity in Iran.