Supporting pollinators, resisting policy: The role of environmental attitudes and psychological reactance among farmers

Abstract Understanding how psychological constructs shape farmers' views on agri‐environmental policy and the role of pollinators in agriculture can help design effective and legitimate agricultural policies. While farmers are key actors in pollinator conservation, recent farmer protests indicate that their support for agri‐environmental policies such as the EU Common Agricultural Policy eco‐schemes is uneven and contested. This study examines how two psychological constructs—environmental attitudes and psychological reactance—relate to farmers' views on the role of pollinators for agriculture and agri‐environmental policies. We conducted face‐to‐face surveys with 248 farmers in Spain and analysed the effect of the psychological constructs and farming variables using multiple linear regression. Farmers generally acknowledged the importance of pollinators for nature and agriculture and were aware of the impacts of agriculture on pollinators. Many rejected the idea that their own farming practices contribute to pollinators' decline. Views on the Common Agricultural Policy and eco‐schemes were ambivalent. While some farmers valued the Common Agricultural Policy and eco‐schemes' potential to promote sustainability, others viewed them as economically harmful, too rigid and designed without considering their opinion. Positive environmental attitudes were associated with the recognition of the value of pollinators and support for agri‐environmental policy. In contrast, psychological reactance was negatively associated with agri‐environmental policy but unrelated to the recognition of pollinators' value. These findings suggest that awareness of pollinator contribution and resistance to top‐down regulations operate as distinct forces shaping farmers' responses to agri‐environmental policy. These effects held across multiple analytical methods and were robust to sociodemographic and farming system covariates. Our results highlight the importance of addressing both positive (environmental attitudes) and negative (psychological reactance) psychological constructs when designing agri‐environmental policies. Farmers' reactance may undermine engagement with agri‐environmental policies, even if they agree with the importance of pollinator conservation, suggesting that policy acceptance depends not only on what environmental goals are pursued but also on how they are designed and implemented. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.