Integrating environmental psychology and game theory to sustain agroecosystem services

• Farmland preservation behavior and its agroecosystem services (AESs) were studied. • The research benefited from integrating environmental psychology and game theory. • Key organizations and their preferences were analyzed to prioritize policy scenarios. • Trade-off between cost and AESs was conducted to select superior policy scenario. • The best scenario saved 865 ha of land, securing benefits valued at $68.83 million. Agricultural lands are invaluable resources that provide a wide range of vital agroecosystem services (AESs) to humans. However, changes in agricultural land use have become a major environmental crisis in recent years. The objective of this study is to (1) identify the factors that influence farmers’ intentions to adopt agricultural land preservation behaviors (ALPBs), (2) determine key interventions to improve farmers’ practices and behaviors, (3) assess the cost-effectiveness of policy scenarios for preserving AESs, and (4) incorporate the preferences of decision-making organizations to prioritize the most effective policy scenarios. To achieve this, a structured questionnaire, grounded in the Health Belief Model (HBM), was used to collect data from a survey of 200 farmers in Juybar County, Mazandaran Province, Iran. Employing structural equation modeling (SEM), the key relationships that influence the adoption of ALPBs were identified, which formed the basis for policy scenarios. Then the effectiveness and costs of implementation the scenarios were estimated and the fallback bargaining solution was applied to incorporate the preferences of decision-making organizations. The SEM results highlighted the importance of perceived benefits, barriers, and susceptibility, emphasizing the roles of fines, taxes, advertising, and cultural policies. The superior policy scenario, based on fallback bargaining, prioritized the high implementation of fines and taxes with minimal advertising and cultural policies. This scenario costs approximately $0.472 million and yields $68.83 million in benefits over ten years while protecting 1,865 ha (7.5 percent) of agricultural land. The proposed hybrid approach offers valuable insights into conservation and environmental management, facilitating the selection of practical and effective policy strategies.