Agri-environmental policy design and farmers' decision-making regarding high nature value landscape feature conservation and restorationAlif, Živa (Avtor) Šumrada, Tanja (Mentor) agricultureagricultural policylandscape featuresnature conservationSloveniaThis doctoral dissertation examines the challenges of conserving and restoring landscape features in intensive agricultural areas of Slovenia and explores opportunities for their more effective integration into agricultural policy. It focuses on fallow land, extensive meadows, and small woody features as three landscape features that make important contributions to biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services. The results of qualitative thematic analysis of interviews and quantitative analysis using Boosted Regression Trees (BRT) show that agricultural intensification is the primary driver of their decline, while social norms, institutional frameworks, and economic factors also play important roles. The analysis of farmers’ preferences with a discrete choice experiment revealed substantial heterogeneity, indicating that universal policy measures are not cost-effective. Policy simulations suggest that the target of 10% landscape features at a landscape level could be achieved more cost-effectively by targeting incentives towards farmers with a higher willingness to participate and by increasing the flexibility of schemes to better match farmers’ preferences, although this may create trade-offs with ecological effectiveness. Randomized controlled trials showed that simple behavioural interventions, or nudges, embedded in information campaigns did not significantly increase farmers’ participation in environmental schemes. The dissertation therefore concludes that effective biodiversity conservation requires more targeted, locally adapted, and integrated approaches that account for the diversity of farms and farmers.Ž. Alif20262026-10-30 07:16:03Doktorsko delo/naloga190577UDK: 631:502(043.3)=111VisID: 302916COBISS_ID: 303199747sl