Drivers of winegrowers' decision on land use abandonment based on exploratory spatial data analysis and multilevel models

Abstract

The frequency of producers opting to abandon agricultural land has become increasingly, highlighting the significance of this phenomenon due to its environmental, landscape, and socio-economic impacts. The decisions of producers to abandon or maintain/improve their farms depend on individual and contextual factors. The aims of this research are twofold. Firstly, to evaluate the influence of the neighbours on the winegrowers´ decisions, using spatial analysis. Secondly, to clarify the specific importance of each of the individual and contextual drivers in farmers´ decisions to improve their farms, to keep them unchanged or to abandon them, using multilevel models. The results obtained for the case study of vineyards in Spain, reveal a strong agglomeration phenomenon in farmers´ decisions indicating that producers make land use decisions influenced by what their neighbours do. A multilevel analysis identifies that individual factors are determinant and that the influence of contextual factors is conditioned by the innovation process at farm level. Individual drivers, such as size, innovation, Protected Designations of Origin and irrigation influence vineyard area, with irrigation having the greatest overall influence, and is expected to be decisive in climate change projections. The Protected Designations of Origin are driving forces that dynamize the territory and achieve productive concentrations, encouraging winegrowers to replant, but they are not enough to halt abandonment. The elements that slow down the abandonment of plots are irrigation and the combination of innovation and context variables, mainly the combination of modernised plots in the municipalities with trading options.