Exploring the Relationship Between Farm System and Value-Based Farmer Typologies to support agri-environmental policy implementation and design

Abstract Environmental objectives in agriculture rely on policy mixes, yet the effectiveness of policy instruments depends on how their underlying behavioural assumptions align with the characteristics of target groups. Understanding heterogeneity among farmers is therefore essential for policy implementation and ex-ante policy assessment. Farm and farmer typologies offer a means of characterising this heterogeneity by capturing both behavioural and the structural contexts in which policy interventions operate. This study examines the relationship between independently derived farm-system and value-based farmer typologies in Danish agriculture. Using survey data based on an extended Environmental Portrait Value Questionnaire combined with structural, household, and biophysical information, we identify six farm-system types and four farmer types. The results reveal a moderate but significant farm-farmer types correspondence, indicating systematic but non-deterministic relationships between production contexts and behavioural profiles. Positioned within the policy cycle, the findings contribute primarily to policy formulation and implementation by making behavioural target-group heterogeneity explicit and providing a basis for examining, ex-ante, how different policy instruments may interact with different segments of the farming population.