The effect of meso-institutions on adoption of sustainable agricultural technology: A case study of the Brazilian Low Carbon Agriculture Plan

Macro and micro institutions have received considerable attention from institutional theory in the analysis of organizational performance. The role played by meso-institutions has hardly been addressed. This article draws on recent institutionalist approaches which introduce meso-institutions as a third layer of the analysis. Meso-institutions on the adoption of environmental technologies is the focus of attention. The Brazilian policy on climate change offered an opportunity for this investigation. Different meso-institutions were created or adjusted to accelerate and monitor the actions and targets of the Brazilian Low Carbon Agriculture Plan. The effects of these meso-institutions on both farmers' decision to adopt Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems (ICLS) and farms performance were estimated through a Simultaneous Equation System (SES). The analyses were based on a survey sample of 175 farmers from the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Our main results corroborate the hypothesis that meso-institutions are of utmost importance to improve resource utilization by the farmers. Economic incentives, risk reduction, capacity building and knowledge sharing provided by meso-institutions had significant impacts on the probability of adopting ICLS and on farms performance. These results suggest that meso-institutions can foster a favorable environment for the adoption of more sustainable technologies at farm-level. The paper innovates in the use of SES to investigate the impacts of meso-institutions on resource allocation decisions of Brazilian cattle farmers. Our empirical findings can contribute to the research agenda on meso-institutions and sustainable technology adoption. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.