Influences on the Adoption of Climate Resilient Water Innovation in Agri-food System: A Construal Theory Approach

Abstract

Global food systems are facing a grand challenge due to daunting food security targets, risk vulnerabilities (e.g., COVID-19 crisis), internal unsustainability regarding resource use and contribution to environmental degradation (e.g., GHG emissions, land degradation and biodiversity loss). Such a situation demands a transformation of the global food system towards more local, alternative, community, and sustainable food systems. Past studies of the food system have shown that major advances toward socio-environmental sustainability can be achieved through the application of technology and the push for innovation. Therefore, since water is at the center of all food system challenges this study focused on climate-resilient water innovation, which includes using hydroponics, aeroponics or aquaponics technologies within a Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) to bring about this change. This qualitative study was undertaken to uncover the individual, institutional, technological, and farm/organizational factors that influenced the adoption of such climate-resilient water technologies. Additionally, it also involved investigating the individual construals and their relation to sustainable water innovation adoption. The study was able to discover new constructs, namely- sustainability ethos, individual construals, land/soil characteristics, location of urban farm, farm size bias, inter-provincial variation, complex systemic technologies, localization, and all-year-round production, that act as barriers and facilitators to sustainable water innovation adoption. Finally, developed a sustainable water innovation adoption model using an inductive and deductive approach that can be used by technology providers, the government and policy institutions for insightful decision-making with respect to water innovation in the Canadian agri-food sector.