German sugar beet farmers’ intention to use autonomous field robots for seeding and weeding

Abstract

Robotic weed control is not yet widely adopted, despite its technological availability and proven economics and sustainability in crop cultivation by replacing seasonal labor and synthetic pesticides. This impedes technologically enabled changes toward more sustainable agricultural systems. Given that adopting robotics for the weeding process requires changing existing systems, farmers' appraisals for the new and the current weeding technology may constitute barriers. However, this dualism has been largely ignored by previous studies. Based on a duality approach, we investigate farmers’ beliefs, and adaptive and maladaptive appraisals of current and new robotic weeding in sugar beets. The main variable of interest is their behavioral intention to adopt weeding robots. For our sample of German farmers, we identify the main enablers perceived efficacy of the robots and social norms. The main barrier are maladaptive rewards from traditional weeding. We recommend policy incentives to promote large-scale uptake of new and more sustainable robotic technologies. To improve efficacy perceptions of such robotic systems public demonstrations/talks are mostly relevant. Maladaptive rewards can be reduced, for instance, by notifying about the dependency of the current practices on future availability of synthetic inputs or seasonal workers. • Robotic weed control can improve environmental impacts but is not applied widely. • First to address the role of appraisals for staying with current weeding systems. • We survey sugar beet farmers' beliefs, adaptive and maladaptive appraisals. • Results show importance of perceived efficacy and norms, and maladaptive rewards. • Policy incentives needed to promote uptake by demonstrating technological efficacy.