Research

INTRODUCTION

Common-pool resource theory suggests that the direct participation of local natural resource users in the management of common-pool resources can lead to effective resource management regimes (Ostrom 1990, 2009, Agrawal 2003). Nevertheless, the drivers of participation in common-pool resource management and the effects of participation on stakeholder attitudes and policy support are relatively understudied (Partelow 2018). Participation of local users depends, in part, on the structure of governance systems and varies depending on cultural, ecological, and political contexts (Newig et al. 2018, Reed et al. 2018). Individual perceptions, prior knowledge, and value systems of local users influence their comprehension of the technical concepts involved in governance decisions (Eaton et al. 2021). These differing perceptions and levels of comprehension create different expectations of the process and outcomes of a resource management regime and can affect participation in policy and implementation processes (Garau et al. 2021). In short, we know that participation may shape governance system preferences and success of a resource management regime, but we lack an understanding of how the social-ecological context of a common-pool resource and individual user attributes interact to influence participation and policy support. Here, we combine two theoretical approaches across social-ecological systems (SESs) and political science to examine drivers and preferences related to farmer participation in sustainable groundwater management in California.

Groundwater is an important common-pool resource for humanity: billions of people rely on groundwater for fresh drinking water, irrigation for agriculture, and industrial production (Siebert et al. 2010, Döll et al. 2012, UNITRACC 2012). Because groundwater is hidden in aquifers below the Earth’s surface and serves as a reliable source of water when surface water is in short supply, groundwater is also becoming depleted at rapid rates in many of the Earth’s largest groundwater basins, including California, USA’s Central Valley (Famiglietti 2014, Bierkens and Wada 2019, Jasechko and Perrone 2021). Groundwater depletion as a collective action problem is further complicated by the policy structures that, in many places, either privatize or rely on a permitting approach to groundwater access (Nelson 2022) or ignore groundwater extraction regulation altogether (e.g., Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act; (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2004; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/index.html).

Despite a relatively long history of local attempts at groundwater governance, California did not regulate groundwater at the state level until the passage of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA; Ostrom 1990, Blomquist 1992, Dennis et al. 2020). SGMA mandated the creation of local-level groundwater sustainability agencies (Agencies) to produce groundwater sustainability plans to avoid six “undesirable results” as determined in the legislation: lowering of groundwater levels, reduction of groundwater storage, seawater intrusion, degraded water quality, land subsidence, and surface water depletion. There is evidence that many of these undesirable results are already occurring throughout the state (Faunt et al. 2016, Jasechko and Perrone 2020). Following sustainability plan writing, the new Agencies then need to implement the plans to achieve sustainable groundwater management within 20 years. The plans require the engagement of diverse beneficial groundwater users in each basin, including agricultural users, to ensure an inclusive definition of groundwater sustainability.

The implementation of SGMA involves a complex policy environment with multiple, often overlapping, actors with varying vested interests across groundwater basins. Given that SGMA both mandates local-level governance of groundwater and requires the broad participation of groundwater beneficial users in the governance process, it represents an opportunity to explore the drivers and preferences related to individuals’ participation in a policy process involving a well-known collective action problem. Agriculture is a key beneficial user in groundwater management: approximately 80% of water in California is used for agriculture (California Department of Water Resources: https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agricultural-Water-Use-Efficiency). As such, farmers represent an important stakeholder group, whose engagement and support for the policy process and implementation is important for achieving sustainable groundwater management in California. Agriculture is not a homogenous set of farms and represents a broad range of needs regarding groundwater access, quantity, and quality (Rudnick et al. 2016). Achieving participation from agricultural groundwater users entails reaching a diversity of farms and farm types to ensure that groundwater management priorities reflect the broad spectrum of agricultural groundwater uses and users.

Here, we use SGMA and the broader groundwater SES context in California to examine drivers of farmer participation, drivers of increased engagement (i.e., higher levels of participation), and the role of participation in shaping support of proposed policy mechanisms. The analyses were performed with data from a 2019 mail survey of 553 farmers across three agricultural counties in California, among high-priority SGMA water basins. We use the SES framework (McGinnis and Ostrom 2014), born out of common-pool resource theory (Ostrom 2007), as a means to account for the diversity of social and ecological factors that may be affecting participation and to describe the situation in which a variety of actors, with a focus on farmers, engage in the SGMA process. Additionally, we broaden the application of the SES framework by including the political science concept of political efficacy (Campbell et al. 1954) to understand how both internal and external political efficacy may influence SGMA participation and how it relates to participants’ support for the implementation of groundwater incentives and/or regulatory policy mechanisms for agriculture. Ultimately, this combination of theoretical approaches with an applied real-world collective action policy problem allows us to determine the drivers and implications of farmer participation within the SGMA policy process.

Participation, political efficacy, and policy support in social-ecological systems

The SES framework is often applied as a diagnostic tool to assess factors that are theoretically found to correlate with robust or successful and long-running self-governance of common-pool resources (Partelow 2018). The framework identifies variables related to the biophysical system, community attributes, and governance regime that may influence interactions between actors and the resulting outcomes. Here, we used the SES framework to guide our analysis to identify these theoretical factors in new contexts (Ostrom 2007, Hammond Wagner 2019, Yoder et al. 2022). In practice, applications of the SES framework have not considered all elements equally, with actors and governance systems especially pronounced in the literature; the action situations are less studied, i.e., the interactions and outcomes, including drivers of participation and related outcomes such as policy support (Partelow 2018). Furthermore, the current way in which actor characteristics are elicited in the framework does not explicitly capture the capacity that actors may have to participate in the action arena. Some of the existing attributes (e.g., socioeconomic attributes) likely correlate with or influence capacity, but these links have also been understudied in the common-pool resource literature. The political knowledge and actor political perceptions likely influence the ways in which actors participate in the action arena, as well as the preferences they have for specific policy outcomes.

Political scientists have argued for decades that policy perceptions and knowledge are critical to participation in the policy environment (e.g., the action arena). In particular, political efficacy, initially defined as “the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process” (Campbell et al. 1954), is identified as an important prerequisite for political participation. Political efficacy initially developed into two components: (1) internal efficacy focused on an individual’s perceived personal competence to understand and participate in the political process (Craig et al. 1990), and (2) external efficacy encompassing people’s assessment of the responsiveness of political bodies and actors to citizens’ demands (Balch 1974, Miller and Traugott 1989). More recently, a third component of political efficacy, i.e., collective efficacy, extends the concept of efficacy to organizations and groups, referring to beliefs about collective capacities in the political arena (Zaccaro et al. 1995). All types of political efficacy are characteristics of actors (including actors in a group such as farmers) within an SES that may affect the degree to which those actors engage with a natural resource policy process such as SGMA. However, political efficacy is yet to be considered as a factor in decision-making within the SES framework. Here, we integrate political efficacy as characteristics of actors under consideration within the SES framework to understand drivers of farmer participation in the SGMA policy process.

In addition to investigating farmer participation in SGMA, we are also interested in how the concepts of political efficacy and participation affect policy support. Newig et al. (2018) hypothesizes that stakeholder participation in a policy process positively influences acceptance of the policy process output by those stakeholders through accommodation of their interests and perceptions of procedural justice. Although there has been theorizing around the role of participation in shaping outcomes such as policy support, much of the theory remains untested (Newig et al. 2018, Reed et al. 2018, Eaton et al. 2021). Within societies with democratic norms, in which the voting public elects officials who then pass and implement policies, public support for policies is critical for the achievement of a policy’s goals. In the context of social movements, Stern et al. (1999) and Stern (2000) consider policy support and acceptance an environmentally significant behavior. Stern et al. (1999) argue that to achieve the goals of a movement, changes will have to be made that require sacrifices, typically in terms of incurring personal financial costs and/or behavior change. If individuals support policies through a “willingness to make personal financial sacrifices for environmental goals” (Stern 2000:410), the struggle to achieve broad acceptance, adoption, and compliance with a policy is eased. As a state-wide mandate with local implementation, SGMA requires local buy-in and support to implement locally selected policy mechanisms and, through these, achieve improved local groundwater conditions.

In our analysis, we differentiate between support for incentive-based policies and regulatory-based policies because they are likely associated with different potential costs, from a stakeholder perspective. Gerdes et al. (2023) suggest that an individual’s policy acceptance is a balance between their personal commitment to an environmental issue and the perceived costs of a particular policy mechanism. Previous research has shown that policy support is related to personal experience, concern, and knowledge of the issue (Niles et al. 2013, Wong-Parodi and Rubin 2022), each of which could affect both personal commitment and perceived costs. Given that incentive-based mechanisms allow individuals to weigh costs and benefits in deciding whether to participate voluntarily, and that regulatory-mechanisms do not do so, it is likely that regulatory-based mechanisms carry higher perceived costs. In line with this reasoning, our previous research showed high levels of farmer support for incentive-based interventions within SGMA, and less support for regulatory-based interventions (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019). Here, to test if participation is related to policy support, we examine if there is a relationship between farmer respondents’ political efficacy, participation in SGMA, and support for incentive- and regulatory-based local groundwater policy mechanisms that form a part of achieving the SGMA groundwater sustainability goals.

Research questions and hypotheses

We use the SES framework in concert with the concepts of political efficacy to understand farmer participation in the political processes associated with the SGMA in California, as well as the relationship of political participation and groundwater policy preferences, which have a range of likely environmental impacts and outcomes. We ask three questions to guide our analysis, with eight associated hypotheses.

Research question 1: How do contextual elements of the groundwater SES affect participation in the policy process? We expect to find that farmers with certain kinds of experience, perceptions, and vested interests (shaped by their social-ecological context) will be most likely to participate in the SGMA process.

• Hypothesis 1: Farmers with known groundwater dependence will be more likely to participate because they have high reliance on the resource and lack representation in the process, which is typically provided through an irrigation district (groundwater dependence means that they are located in “white areas” with no access to a district that delivers surface water, named as such because these areas have no overlying surface water district memberships and therefore are white areas on the map).
• Hypothesis 2: Farmers with high internal political efficacy will be more likely to participate (these are farmers who believe they have high ability to affect change and know the process and system).
• Hypothesis 3: Farmers with high external or collective political efficacy will be more likely to participate (these are farmers who believe the government is responsive to their concerns and hears their perspectives).
• Hypothesis 4: Farmers with greater social networks will be more likely to participate (i.e., these farmers are Farm Bureau members and receive information from many sources).
• Hypothesis 5: Farmers with greater concerns for groundwater issues and their immediacy will be more likely to participate, given the impending impact on the natural resource.

Research question 2: How does political efficacy affect the level of participation? SGMA participation opportunities are characterized by different levels of engagement from both time and knowledge perspectives.

• Hypothesis 6: Increasing level of engagement (voting, testifying, sitting on a board) will correlate with higher internal and external or collective political efficacy perceptions.

Research question 3: How does the groundwater SES context and policy participation affect SGMA support for regulatory and incentive policies? We expect that policy preferences will be shaped by the groundwater SES context, level of participation, and existing internal and external political efficacy.

• Hypothesis 7: Individuals with greater concerns and impending timelines for groundwater impacts will be more likely to support regulatory policies.
• Hypothesis 8: Higher levels of internal and external or collective efficacy will correlate with greater preference for regulatory policies. Individuals who perceive that the government is responding to their needs will be more likely to give the government control over water regulations, including regulatory approaches. Individuals with a high level of internal efficacy are also more likely to participate and will likely have received more information about the current groundwater situation and the structure of proposed policies.

METHODS

Survey and data collection

We used a multipronged engagement and mail survey distribution process to facilitate data collection. First, we developed a survey instrument, largely based on a mail survey conducted with 137 farmers in Yolo County, California in 2017 (described fully by Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019). This original survey was based on focus groups with 20 farmers, conducted in 2016 as part of an interdisciplinary project that directly engaged with Agencies and water irrigation districts in the region (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2018). The survey deployment was conducted in three counties (Fresno, Madera, and San Luis Obispo), all high-priority SGMA basins, across the California Central Valley and Central Coast, in which the agricultural context, farm size and distribution, water availability, and groundwater Agency formation varied. These regions represent a mix of agricultural types ranging from vineyard agriculture to extensive nonirrigated livestock grazing, orchard and nut tree crops, and diversified vegetable and row crop agriculture. Mailing lists for the survey were determined through publicly available databases, including the county-level pesticide use reporting list and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Organic Integrity database (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2019). These lists were combined and duplicate entries were removed. Institutional Review Board approval was obtained from the University of Vermont before any research activities began.

To engage with the agricultural community in the survey’s development, we conducted meetings in February 2019 with county-level Farm Bureaus and local water agencies to understand their interests and information needs. Furthermore, we partnered directly with the county-level Farm Bureaus in each of the three counties such that logos and letters from county Farm Bureau presidents accompanied our survey instrument. Although most farmers in these counties are represented by the county Farm Bureau, we recognize that this partnership did not represent all farmers in the county.

Here, we use the term “farmers” to indicate the respondents to the survey, who were the head operators of a farm (and therefore, most likely not farm workers). Farmers were first contacted via a postcard announcing that the survey would be forthcoming. Then, a survey, along with a letter describing the survey that was co-signed by the principal investigator as well as the relevant county Farm Bureau president, was sent to all farmers in winter 2019. Following the Dillman method (Dillman et al. 2014), we then sent a reminder postcard to all respondents from whom we had not received responses, and then a second survey to all non-respondents.

Variable selection

We aimed to assess the factors associated with political process participation and support of regulatory- and incentive-based policies, which represent key dependent interactions and outcomes within the SGMA action situation. Additional variables of interest from the survey were mapped onto the SES framework (McGinnis and Ostrom 2014) to determine relevant factors associated with resource systems, resource units, governance systems, actors, and interactions and outcomes, with the acknowledgment that some variables overlap in multiple categories (Fig. 1, Table 1). Resource systems include the overall sector (water) and location (California), which are held constant. We generated six different scales, used confirmatory factor analysis, and tested for an internal validity score with a Cronbach alpha > 0.70 (Nunnally 1978; Appendix 1). The groundwater concern scale includes five of the six undesirable results indicated in the SGMA legislation, with saltwater intrusion deemed to be irrelevant in Madera and Fresno counties (however, this question was asked in San Luis Obispo County and is reported in the descriptive results). We included access to agricultural water as an additional issue of concern in the groundwater concern scale. In previous research with Yolo County farmers on the SGMA, we found that participating farmers had a strongly held concern for losing accessing to water for agriculture that was distinct from concerns for the SGMA-defined undesirable results (e.g., a farm could lose access to agricultural water for reasons other than a well going dry from declining groundwater elevation, such as a change in policy; Niles and Hammond Wagner 2018). As such, we were interested to know how concern for loss of water for agricultural use compared to concern for the SGMA undesirable results. The time-frame scale is an average of the perceived timeline of the undesirable results occurring over a range of immediate to 20-yr time frames. The internal efficacy scale measures internal knowledge about participating in and understanding the SGMA process. The external or collective efficacy scale is a set of questions related to collective (farmer) involvement in the SGMA process and perceptions about the process (fairness and local management). Our previous research demonstrated that the majority of farmers in focus groups and the Yolo County farmer survey had a preference for the SGMA process being managed at the local level (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2018); thus, we interpret this local-level management question as being a stated preference for government responding to farmer needs and interests. Finally, the regulatory policy scale and incentive policy scale encompass preferences for six and five different policy approaches, respectively.

Statistical analysis

We used seven mixed-effects models to predict: (1) overall participation in any kind of SGMA policy engagement, (2–5) participation in four specific kinds of SGMA policy processes (separate models for each of: attending a meeting, participating in an SGMA board, testifying to an SGMA board, or voting on Agency formation for the SGMA), (6) level of support for regulatory policies related to groundwater sustainability, and (7) level of support for incentive policies to address groundwater sustainability. We included county as a random effect in all models to control for differences between county-wide dynamics (Madera, Fresno, San Luis Obispo). Mixed-effects (multilevel) models effectively address multiple comparisons and yield more efficient estimates than do classical models (Gelman et al. 2012). For models 1–5, we used generalized linear models with a logit/binomial distribution. For models 6 and 7, we used generalized linear models with a Gaussian/normal distribution. All analyses were performed in Stata 17.0.

RESULTS

Farmer respondent characteristics

Our sample comprised 553 farmer survey responses in total across the three counties: 359 from Fresno County, 101 from Madera County, and 93 from San Luis Obispo. The overall response rate was 12.6%, ranging from 12% in Fresno County to 15.5% in Madera County. Fewer than one-half of the farmers surveyed had participated in any SGMA-related events, with attending an SGMA meeting the most common (44.65%), and testifying before an SGMA board the least common (6.17%; Table 2). Nearly two-thirds (64.31%) of farmers had at least some groundwater in their farming systems, but only 10% of farmers used groundwater exclusively (white areas). On average, farmers managed 746 acres, which is significantly larger than the average farm size in these three counties according to the 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census, in which average farm sizes were 345 acres in Fresno County (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2017a), 466 acres in Madera County (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2017b), and 396 acres in San Luis Obispo County (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2017c), although some significant outliers influenced this average (Table 2). Sixty-nine percent of respondents had a bachelor’s degree and were full-time farmers, with an average age of 61 yr (born in 1956). More than one-half of the respondents (56.96%) were Farm Bureau members in their county, and more than one-half (53.36%) had received any information about the SGMA (Table 2).

Overview of farmer perspectives and experiences

We asked farmers about their level of concern for six undesirable results articulated in the SGMA that are to be avoided, as well as their concern for the loss of agricultural water access (Fig. 2). Overall, most farmers were concerned about all groundwater-related issues (4, 5, or 6, where 6 = deeply concerned on a 1–6 scale), except for saltwater intrusion, which was only included in questions in San Luis Obispo County. Farmers showed the greatest concern for the loss of agricultural water access (≥ 89.9% concerned).

We also asked farmers about the perceived time frame during which they thought these undesirable results would occur (Fig. 3). The majority of farmers thought that all groundwater impacts were either occurring now or would be occurring within the next five years (except for saltwater intrusion in San Luis Obispo). Most farmers thought that groundwater levels (56.8%) and groundwater storage (53.9%) were already affected.

To assess political efficacy, we generated internal and external efficacy scales. Overall, farmers exhibited higher levels of external than internal efficacy (Fig. 4). Most farmers agreed to some extent that the process was being managed locally (66.8%), that farmers had been involved in the SGMA process (64.4%), and that the process had been fair (50.0%). Conversely, fewer than one-half of the surveyed farmers agreed to any extent on internal efficacy factors, including knowing how to participate in the process (47.6%) and understanding the SGMA policy process (44.9%).

Regulatory and incentive policy support

We asked farmers about a series of potential water policies that could be used to address groundwater sustainability in California and that had been used or proposed in other western states. Generally, many farmers were against (strongly against, against, or somewhat against) potential regulatory policies for water management (range 50.9–77.4%), except for permits for drilling new wells, which 58.1% supported (strongly support, support, or somewhat support; Fig. 5). For incentive or non-regulatory policies, > 80% of farmers supported all potential policies, ranging from 83.8% supporting individual recharge credits to 92.8% supporting district investment in conjunctive use infrastructure such as water storage.

Who participates in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act? (Hypotheses 1–5)

In assessing predictors of any type of participation in the SGMA, we identify multiple factors significantly (P < 0.05) associated with participation (Fig. 6, Appendix 1). Higher participation was associated with larger farms (odds ratio [OR] = 1.001, P = 0.001), Farm Bureau membership (OR = 1.902, P = 0.022), farmers that received any type of SGMA information (OR = 2.600, P = 0.002), and farmers with higher internal efficacy scales (OR = 2.278, P < 0.001). Farmers with higher external efficacy scales were associated with reduced odds of participation (OR = 0.745, P = 0.040). These model results support hypothesis 2, that farmers with higher internal political efficacy would be more likely to participate, as well as hypothesis 4, that farmers with greater social networks are more likely to participate, (i.e., Farm Bureau membership and receiving information about the SGMA). These results, however, do not support hypothesis 1 (i.e., higher groundwater dependence associated with participation), hypothesis 3 (i.e., higher external political efficacy associated with participation), or hypothesis 5 (i.e., greater groundwater concerns associated with participation).

Who participates in different kinds of policy engagements? (Hypotheses 1–6)

Investigating predictors of participation across specific types of engagement, we find that few demographic factors predicted participation in specific SGMA engagements (Fig. 7, Appendix 1). Attending a SGMA meeting was associated with being a Farm Bureau member (OR = 1.866, P = 0.022), whereas larger farms were associated with being on an SGMA board (OR = 1.000, P = 0.026) and voting (OR = 1.000, P = 0.040), and full-time farmers had greater odds of voting (OR = 2.657, P = 0.040). Receiving any information about the SGMA was also associated with increased odds of attending a meeting (OR = 2.486, P < 0.001). In contrast, policy-specific factors were significantly associated with increasing engagement in the SGMA. Higher internal efficacy scales were positively associated with greater odds of all SGMA engagement opportunities, whereas previously participating in agricultural programs and policies were associated with increased odds of both testifying (OR = 2.907, P = 0.031) and voting (OR = 2.283, P = 0.015).

Combining these results with our basic participation model, we again find mixed evidence for our hypotheses. All five participation model results reject hypothesis 1, that farmers with higher groundwater dependence would be more likely to participate at all or in any specific activity. However, all five models support hypothesis 2, that farmers with higher internal political efficacy would be more likely to participate. We find no evidence for hypothesis 3, that farmers with higher external political efficacy would also be more likely to participate. We find several instances supporting hypothesis 4, that farmers with greater social networks are more likely to participate, including being members of the Farm Bureau and receiving information about the SGMA. Surprisingly, we find no evidence for hypothesis 5, that farmers with greater groundwater concerns and closer perceived time frames would be more likely to participate in the SGMA process. Finally, we find evidence to support hypothesis 6, that higher internal political efficacy is positively associated with all specific levels of engagement, but external efficacy is not (Table 3).

How does participation and the social-ecological system relate to policy preferences? (Hypotheses 7 and 8)

To assess the relationship between participation in the SGMA process and farmers’ social-ecological context on their SGMA policy preferences, we ran two separate mixed-effects models. Factors associated with greater regulatory policy support included serving on an SGMA board (b = 0.615, P = 0.006), farming in an all-white area where there was only groundwater (b = 0.374, P = 0.046), larger farms (b = 0.0004, P = 0.042), farmers with previous experience in other agricultural policies or programs (b = 0.504, P < 0.001), farmers with higher internal efficacy scales (b = 0.221, P < 0.001), and farmers who felt the time frame for groundwater impacts was closer (b = 0.178, P = 0.001). Conversely, Farm Bureau membership was associated with reduced support for regulatory policies (b = −0.302, P = 0.014; Fig. 8, Appendix 1).

In exploring the factors associated with supporting incentive policies for the SGMA, we find similar results (Fig. 9, Appendix 1). Farmers with only groundwater (b = 0.276, P = 0.047), higher internal efficacy scales (b = 0.093, P = 0.012), and time frames for groundwater impacts that were closer (b = 0.146, P < 0.001) were more likely to support incentive policies for the SGMA. Conversely, farmers who owned a larger percentage of their farm (b = −0.003, P = 0.033) and those who had received any information about the SGMA (b = −0.189, P = 0.029) were less likely to support incentive policies.

Taken together, we find mixed evidence for our hypotheses about regulatory and incentive policy support (Table 4). We find that the perception that the timeline of groundwater impacts is occurring now or soon is positively associated with regulatory policies as well as incentive policies, but we find no effect of groundwater concern on policy support (hypothesis 7). We also find mixed results for hypothesis 8 in that higher levels of internal efficacy are correlated with both greater support of regulatory and incentive policies, but there is no effect of external efficacy on either policy type.

DISCUSSION

Our analysis assessed three key questions about the role of groundwater SES factors in policy participation, the extent to which political efficacy influences policy participation, and how SES factors and policy participation shape farmer support for groundwater policies. Among our key findings are the important relationship between internal political efficacy and participation in the political process, as well as between internal efficacy and support for both incentive and regulatory policy support, components of the SES framework that have not previously been explored.

Groundwater social-ecological system factors influencing policy participation

Participation in any type of SGMA policy event was positively associated with multiple characteristics of the groundwater SES context that likely indicate a higher level of social, financial, and built capital. Fewer than half of the farmers we surveyed had participated in any SGMA events, and those who did were more likely to be from larger farms, had more connected networks through the Farm Bureau, and received information through their networks on the SGMA. Additionally, those with high internal efficacy were associated with a greater likelihood of participation. These results are consistent with other analyses of the SGMA, finding that communities that were smaller, low income, and lacking political recognition (i.e., through incorporated cities or water districts) were less likely to be represented in Agencies (Dobbin and Lubell 2021). Conversely, those with existing social networks in water management were more likely to engage politically in the process (Méndez-Barrientos et al. 2020). As Méndez-Barrientos et al. (2020) also note, the process for engaging in the SGMA for farmers who were not already part of an irrigation district (e.g., those in white areas) was also more complex and necessarily involved more organization, although our results do not find a significant effect of white area status on participation.

Farmers with higher external or collective efficacy were less likely to participate in the SGMA process. This result runs counter to existing research that demonstrates that high external efficacy is a strong predictor of the intensity of participation (such as donating to political causes, volunteering, or attending campaign events; Finkel 1985, Šerek et al. 2017). External political efficacy in the United States and globally has been declining for decades, which has been widely linked to a decline in political participation (Henderson and Han 2021), as well as to socioeconomic status (Borgonovi and Pokropek 2017). External or collective efficacy in the context of the SGMA is multilayered, consisting both of efficacy perceptions at the state level and at the local, groundwater-basin level. Moreover, perceptions of external efficacy can also be shaped by a sense of community and trust (Anderson 2010). Méndez-Barrientos et al. (2020) demonstrate that resistance to centralized government intervention in the SGMA process was a common unifying farmer goal, which ultimately drove participation in the SGMA. We measure external or collective efficacy both in terms of how farmers were involved in the process and the extent to which it was locally managed. Farmers in our sample generally perceived both of these factors to occur, which aligns with previously stated farmer preferences for local control and farmer involvement (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2018). External efficacy in our sample may have been associated with less participation because farmers trusted and believed that other farmers were involved locally, in a locally controlled process, and therefore they did not need to participate. In sum, in the complex, multilevel SGMA process, external or collective efficacy beliefs appear to function differently than in previous case studies, and the mechanisms behind this relationship should be investigated in future research.

Internal efficacy is the only consistent predictor of the four specific kinds of engagement (i.e., meeting, board, testify, and vote). However, there are different groundwater SES contextual factors associated with more shallow participation (i.e., meeting attendance) as compared to more complex participation (i.e., testifying on the board or voting on Agency formation). Aligned with the general participation results, Farm Bureau networks and receiving of SGMA information are important for more shallow political participation: both are significant predictors of attending an SGMA meeting. Conversely, previous experience in other programs or policies is associated with a higher likelihood of more complex political engagement. Previous policy experience and internal efficacy (which also predicts more complex policy participation) are likely related, as individuals with political knowledge (Reichert 2016) and previous participation in other policy or program processes (e.g., internships) have higher internal efficacy (Mariani and Klinkner 2009). Because internal efficacy is largely related to personal competence in the policy process, scholars have also noted that low internal political efficacy is often the result of social inequalities, including disparities in access to education, social services, and input into community processes, which disproportionately affect communities of color and other historically marginalized groups (Padilla et al. 2020). Thus, marginalized communities, including some farmers, often lack political efficacy and may be especially disenfranchised in collective policy processes. Indeed, water policy tensions and processes in California and elsewhere have demonstrated that highly capable and resource-rich farmers can design policy processes or mechanisms that favor their interests (Kemerink et al. 2013, Méndez-Barrientos et al. 2018, 2020). It is important to note that, because of the cross-sectional nature of the data, we cannot assume causality of these relationships; it could be possible that people gained higher internal efficacy with participation in the process, and not that those with already existing internal efficacy were more likely to participate.

Existing work on internal efficacy and political engagement is often less frequent in historically marginalized and underserved communities (Solt 2008, Bruch and Soss 2018, Padilla et al. 2020). However, there is consensus across the literature that both internal and external efficacy are related to higher socioeconomic status (Marx and Nguyen 2016, Borgonovi and Pokropek 2017, Bene 2020), which is posited to affect efficacy through greater access to information and education, which can increase mechanisms for political engagement that may be more effective. Our results align with this consensus and suggest that smallholder farmers with less extensive networks are participating less in SGMA events. Other research has shown that this lower level of participation includes historically marginalized and underserved farmers (Dobbin 2020, Méndez-Barrientos et al. 2020, Dobbin and Lubell 2021). A recent census of the 108 SGMA sustainability plans for medium- and high-priority basins found that the vast majority of the sustainability plans failed to integrate comprehensively stakeholders and economically vulnerable groups, especially disadvantaged communities and small farms (Perrone et al. 2023). Our results highlight the continued need for implementing diverse outreach strategies designed to engage farmers of different socioeconomic status, farm size, and farm type. These strategies include traditional outreach partners and locations such as government, non-profit, and farm organizations, and non-traditional places such as churches, community and civic organizations, and schools, which are important gathering places, especially for marginalized and underserved communities (McClerking and McDaniel 2005, Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008). With the reciprocal relationship between participation and internal efficacy, engagement through non-traditional channels could boost internal efficacy among such groups, which could lead to future participation.

Incentive and regulatory policy support

In line with our previous research on SGMA policy mechanisms, farmers in our sample were much more supportive of incentive-based policies than regulatory-based policies (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019). Interestingly, and also in line with our previous work, many farmers supported each of the individual regulatory policy mechanisms (23–58%, depending on the specific mechanism). This result suggests that a large portion of the farmers in our sample are willing to incur sacrifices in the form of financial costs or required management changes to achieve the goal of sustainable groundwater resources in their groundwater basin.

We find that internal efficacy is a significant and positive predictor of support for both incentive and regulatory policy. Previous work on the relationship between political efficacy and policy support found that policy support was predicted by both internal and external or collective efficacy, what Meijers et al. (2023) refer to as a larger typology of personal, collective, and governmental efficacy. Additionally, Thaker et al. (2019) found that support for government water conservation policies is associated with trust in government (external efficacy) and collective efficacy (people’s shared belief that their group can accomplish collective tasks). Interestingly, external or collective efficacy is not predictive in either of the policy support models. Again, we suggest that this null result may be due to the complex, multilevel nature of the SGMA policy, such that there is ambiguity in which level of governance is referenced by collective or external efficacy beliefs. Future research on external or collective efficacy in multilevel policies such as the SGMA could seek to tease apart efficacy beliefs within different governmental or external actors. The relationship between internal efficacy and support for both incentive and regulatory policies could relate to an increased understanding of the policy mechanisms and their potential to improve groundwater outcomes. However, given that most previous research has examined the role of political efficacy for political participation, not for specific policy design outcomes, this is another area of needed research.

Previous policy participation was associated only with support for regulatory policies, and not for incentive-based policies. In the literature on stakeholder participation, it has been theorized that participation can not only lead to an improved environmental standard of the policy output but also affect the participants through increased acceptance of the policy outputs and increased compliance (Newig et al. 2018). It is unclear why this effect appears to apply to regulatory-based policies in our sample, but not to incentive-based policies; however, it could be because there exists a high level of baseline support for incentive-based policies. In our previous work on the SGMA, we found that support for regulatory policies relies on social norms of commitment to resolving unsustainable groundwater management (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019). There is an ever-present temptation to avoid personal costs and “free-ride” off the actions of others in common-pool resource dilemmas such as groundwater usage (Ostrom 1990). Regulatory policies, although they likely incur higher personal costs, may, under the right circumstances, increase the likelihood of achieving social benefits for all with enforcement mechanisms and potential fines or sanctions. It is possible that previous policy participation creates a social norm of commitment to resolving groundwater issues (in line with our results in Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019) or, through some other mechanism, increases issue significance, personal commitment to an issue, and the potential for free-riding to erode the potential for groundwater sustainability.

In addition to internal efficacy and participation, we find that farmers who are exclusively using groundwater and farmers who believe that groundwater sustainability issues are in the near term vs. farther away in time were also more likely to support both types of policies. White area farmers likely have a higher level of vested interested in SGMA policy success and groundwater sustainability and, therefore, greater commitment to the issue, shown previously to be an important component in policy support (Gerdes et al. 2023). These farmers were also arguably disadvantaged in the SGMA policy process in terms of representation because their lack of existing irrigation district membership (which often translated directly to an Agency) means that they did not have representation in Agency leadership (Méndez-Barrientos et al. 2020). Interestingly, the importance of the groundwater sustainability timeline runs counter to our previous results among farmers in Yolo County, California, in which the time-frame scale of groundwater impacts was not found to be associated with incentive policy support or regulatory policy support (Niles and Hammond Wagner 2019).

Taken together, the results demonstrate that political competence and experience with policy processes and programs are not only associated with participation in current policy issues, which is widely recognized in existing research (e.g., Moeller et al. 2014, Hart and Feldman 2016), but are also associated with support for policy mechanisms, in particular, potentially more costly regulatory-based mechanisms.

Limitations and future research

Our work highlights many opportunities for future research, especially to contribute to addressing the limitations of this research. First, the SGMA process is incredibly complex and, given the large number of different Agencies, no single process is the same as any other. As such, the SGMA process provides an ideal case for examining processes and outcomes among a large number of policy processes in the same regulatory and resource context (Lubell et al. 2020). Understanding the relationship between stakeholder participation in the SGMA processes and the outcomes of the SGMA planning process for stakeholder groups, e.g., the environmental standard of protection for stakeholders, has the potential to improve significantly the understanding of the process and outcomes of stakeholder participation. However, to understand these processes would necessarily require longitudinal studies. Because our work is cross-sectional, we can only make associations between factors of interest and outcomes, not causal inferences. Second, as is suggested by the SES framework, the political policy process and “arena” is complex and necessarily involves a diversity of actors. However, little work has considered how the actors present may influence political policy support, especially as it relates to environmental outcomes (Baudoin and Gittins 2021). Relatedly, our work highlights the importance of internal and external or collective political efficacy as predictors of both policy participation and policy support. As such, both mechanisms should be studied further, including in the way in which questions are asked to elicit this understanding. In particular, our measurement of external or collective efficacy may need refinement to capture both elements. We acknowledge that our assumption that farmers want local control as a component of external efficacy, based on previous research, may not be true of all farmers. Additionally, because of the cross-sectional nature of our study, we encourage further research into the directionality of the relationship between political efficacy and policy participation. The SGMA offers an interesting case study through which such analysis could occur, by examining several Agencies over time and their relative ability based on their policy design, to mitigate or avoid the six undesirable water outcomes associated with the legislation.

CONCLUSION

We examined farmer participation in California’s SGMA local-level policy processes to understand better the drivers and effects of stakeholder participation in formal common-pool resource policymaking. Although stakeholder participation in natural resource policy processes has been hypothesized to result in more effective policy, many elements of this relationship remain unknown. We contribute to this knowledge gap through our findings that both elements of the social-ecological context and perceptions of the policy process (specifically, internal political efficacy) shape policy participation, degree of participation, and support for both incentive and regulatory policy mechanisms. Our study shows that farmers with higher internal efficacy (i.e., knowledge and participation in the process) were more likely to participate in SGMA policy events and to support both incentive and, especially, regulatory groundwater policy approaches. These findings provide additional evidence for the ways in which policy participation influence policy outcomes and suggest that processes in which farmer participation is needed could benefit by facilitating spaces that support internal efficacy. Our work demonstrates the promising integration of the SES framework and political science concepts of political efficacy as a means to further characterize the role of stakeholder participation in common-pool resource policy processes.

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