The Effect of Farmers Social Networks on Sustainable Agricultural Practices Adoption: A Scoping Review Protocol

Abstract

Agriculture as practiced for decades had a considerable negative impact on the environment. To fulfill the needs of the growing population, the yield had been increased by the use of more land, fertilizer, and pesticides. The consequences were the destruction of the forest, the loss of biodiversity, irrigation problems, the pollution, and so on. To remedy this, a new form of agriculture has emerged: sustainable agriculture. The goal is “to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Adoption of adequate agricultural practices is the best way to implement sustainable agriculture. Many factors have been found to affect farmers in their decision to effectively adopt sustainable agricultural practices. External factors, such as farmers’ social networks, have increasingly captured the interest of researchers. In this paper, we will be presenting a scoping review protocol under the structure recommended by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) by answering the following questions: 1-What do we currently know about the influence of farmers’ social networks in their decision to adopt sustainable agricultural practices? 2-What are the theories/methods used by researchers to study this effect? 3- What are the major knowledge gaps? We used five electronic databases to conduct this scoping review: Web of Science, Sciences Direct, Wiley Online Library, SpringerLink, and EBSCO host.