The effect of environmental awareness on motivation in adopting farming conservation techniques in the various agro-ecological zones: a case study in critical land of Java Island, Indonesia

The lack of efforts in promoting conservation technologies to farming communities in the last few decades made the area of critical land, particularly over Java Island, increased by 28.33% during 2009–2014. Another cause of this condition is the unsatisfactory results of the existing land management techniques. The decision to conserve degraded lands should be supported by environmental awareness among the farmers. This study aims to determine (1) the level of environmental awareness and the motivation of farmers to conserve critical lands, (2) the motivation of farmers to adopt conservation techniques, and (3) the effect of environmental awareness on motivation in adopting conservation techniques in three agro-ecological zones, i.e., the highlands, lowlands, and coastal areas. The number of respondents was 600 farmers with an equal number of samples for each zone. The analytical tools used were the crosstab, Spearman correlation, and the structural equation modeling (SEM). The first key finding is that the agro-ecological zone difference determined the level of environmental awareness and farmers’ motivation to implement conservation. The second key result is that the coastal area farmers had higher motivations to adopt conservation techniques than the other two agro-ecological zones. We also observe that the farmers who had a high level of environmental awareness will have a strong motivation to adopt conservation techniques. Overall, providing highland farmers with an understanding and practical training on conservation is essential to increase their conservation motivation that has been possessed and implemented by most of the coastal and lowland farmers.