The Human Side of Restoration

That realization has led us to make significant investments in social science alongside the environmental science that has long been a hallmark of our work. Today, we are building a conservation model that combines rigorous environmental evaluation with equally rigorous efforts to understand how landowners and land managers make decisions, what barriers they face and what motivates them to adopt conservation practices. This integration of environmental and social science is ensuring that our work will lead to meaningful durable improvements for the Bay and local communities.

Understanding the “Implementation Gap”

Conservation science has provided clear evidence about practices that can reduce nutrient losses from farm fields, improve habitat and restore ecosystem function. Yet many of those practices remain underutilized across the watershed.

Recent research led by Matt Houser, TNC’s senior social scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Program, focuses on what has become known as the “implementation gap”—the difference between the conservation outcomes needed to meet restoration goals and the rate at which conservation practices are actually adopted on the ground.

The question is no longer simply, “What works environmentally?”

The more pressing question is, “How do we encourage and enable people to adopt what works?”

The answer often lies in understanding economic risk, social norms, trusted relationships, administrative burdens and landowner values. These factors can strongly influence decisions about conservation, even when environmental benefits are clear. Research examining innovative Chesapeake Bay conservation programs has shown that trust, ease of participation, flexibility and risk reduction can be decisive factors in helping farmers embrace new practices. See this recent article evaluating farmer incentives through TNC’s work with our agribusiness partners.

Our Theory of Change

TNC’s theory of change is straightforward:

We use environmental science to measure conservation outcomes and social science to understand how those outcomes can be achieved at scale.

In practice, that means implementing “learning projects” that do much more than install conservation practices on a handful of farms, across a few hundred acres. We draw on social data—real insights on what can enable decision-makers to adopt practices—to design projects. We then use these projects as opportunities to test assumptions, evaluate adoption strategies, measure ecological impacts and refine approaches that enable widespread, voluntary behavior change based on evidence.

Our environmental scientists monitor outcomes such as habitat improvements, water quality and agronomic response. At the same time, our social scientists work alongside landowners, agribusinesses, local communities and academic partners to understand what drives participation, what barriers remain and how we can design programs that better overcome these limits to change.

Together, these disciplines help answer two equally important questions regarding our projects:

1. Did our interventions promote significant and persistent practice adoption?
2. And was there a significant environmental benefit from those adopted practices?

Only when both answers are yes can we achieve watershed-scale impact.

A Reason for Optimism

Nitrogen runoff from agriculture is the largest source of nutrients entering the Chesapeake Bay, which makes farmers’ management decisions critical to improving water quality. Yet adoption has lagged behind what is needed. While often farmers were assumed to be uninterested or unwilling to adopt practices, we focused on using data-driven approaches to identify the challenges and co-developing solutions with farmers and their advisors.

Using social evaluations of our programs, we are identifying what is working for farmers (and not) and where there are opportunities to improve to ensure that farmers will participate.

One program that has proved successful is the 4R farmer voucher program. Working through the MidAtlantic 4R Nutrient Stewardship Association (a unique partnership advancing efforts to improve nutrient management on farms to achieve environmental and economic benefits) we tested the use of a small coupon or “voucher” intended to enable farmer behavior change. Delivered to producers through agribusiness partners, in the first season 30 vouchers supported conservation planning on 8,859 acres, of which farmers implemented practices on 6,063 acres. Our social science analysis showed this effort helped farmers overcome barriers to adoption and resulted in environmental outcomes. The flexibility allowed farmers to reduce financial risks to try practices they were interested in but uncertain about. Farmers also trusted the messenger, their private sector advisor. What’s more—most producers reported that the practices were proving profitable, and they were planning to continue to use them in the future without additional incentives. As one farmer told us:

“If we come to [farmers] with solutions like [the voucher program], you know, that fix the [environmental] problem but still make them more money, I mean, it’s a game changer.”

MidAtlantic 4R continues to advance the voucher program, expanding to delivering vouchers to 100 farmers for the 2026-27 crop season. TNC will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of this program on the environmental outcomes and the continued use of practices by farmers after the initial use of the voucher. We will then use these findings along with results of other projects to improve policy and programs that support farmers to adopt conservation.

Achieving Bay environmental goals is a massive effort. It depends on encouraging and enabling tens of thousands of individual land managers to shift their behavior. We need to meet them where they’re at and find ways to achieve a shared vision of a better future. Through social science, we’re pursuing pathways for at-scale change, with the goal of improving the environment and the livelihoods of the Chesapeake communities.

As we look ahead, I am more optimistic than ever about the future of the Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts. By pairing world-class applied science with cutting-edge social science, we are not only learning what works—we are learning how to make it work at the scale the Bay needs.

Thank you for your partnership, your support and your commitment to the Chesapeake Bay.

With gratitude,

Amy Jacobs

Chesapeake Bay Program Director