Economics & Marketing
Carrie Wilson
- Senior Research Officer
- carrie.wilson1@jcu.edu.au
Diana Castorina
- Lecturer, Economics
- diana.castorina@jcu.edu.au
Rachel Hay
- Head, Economics and Marketing
- rachel.hay@jcu.edu.au
Diane Jarvis
- Associate Professor, Economics
- diane.jarvis1@jcu.edu.au
Sizhong Sun
- Professor
- sizhong.sun@jcu.edu.au
Taha Chaiechi
- Adjunct Professor
- taha.chaiechi@jcu.edu.au
Breda McCarthy
- Senior Lecturer
- breda.mccarthy@jcu.edu.au
Riccardo Welters
- Associate Professor
- riccardo.welters@jcu.edu.au
Tracey Mahony
- Adjunct Senior Lecturer
- tracey.mahony@jcu.edu.au
Influencing agriculture practice behaviour change and trust frameworks. (Old ID 26963)
Rachel Hay
01 Jan 2020 - 10 Dec 2020
The ecologically-determined water quality improvement targets for the Great Barrier Reef can only be met with significant improvement in farm management practices. Numerous programs over many years, utilising a variety of approaches, have worked with land managers and representative farmer groups, seeking to achieve high levels of uptake of recommended farming practices. However, these have only met with low-moderate success. There has been significant work encouraging and facilitating behaviour and practice change in recent years, including through, but certainly not limited to, the NESP TWQ Hub. Programs encouraging behaviour and practice change are set to remain a feature of contemporary reef funding programs. Thus it is timely to coordinate a synthesis of learnings in this domain. Increasing understanding of, and improving trust frameworks and behaviour change of land managers will lead to improved water quality to the Great Barrier Reef. Understanding the impetus, benefits and barriers of behaviour change for agricultural practice is a large step in improving water quality to the Great Barrier Reef.
F2F TEKFARM - Accelerating and Scaling Adoption of Drought Resilience Technologies
Rachel Hay
21 Nov 2023 - 30 Jun 2025
Activities are aligned with the TNQ Drought Hub technology adoption, on-farm deployment and current activities. This funding will support key Hub staff in technology adoption and complement the $1.25m 12-month extension through Future Drought Fund (FDF) funding. JCU will contribute to the project steering committee, guide at least 15 primary producers through agtech capability building, facilitate at least 30 technology deployments on farm.
"Money on my Mind": Investigating the Dynamics of Financial Worry (Old ID 26950)
Riccardo Welters
01 Feb 2020 - 31 Dec 2021
We aim to (1) examine the extent to which financial worry is "dynamic", that is, the extent to which financial worry changes over time within individuals, for instance from week-to-week; (2) examine how intra-individual changes in financial worry associate with intra-individual changes in personal well-being, social and human capital, and labour market behaviour (3) identify moderating factors that mitigate the negative effects of financial worry; that is, factors that may offset the deleterious effects of financial worry and eventually help in breaking the poverty cycle. We will conduct bi-weekly surveys of individuals with various backgrounds, in three countries Netherlands, Belgium and Australia.
RP228 Landholder Stewardship Research to understand the human dimensions influencing land management practice change in Great Barrier Reef catchments (Old ID 27051)
Rachel Hay
20 Sep 2020 - 31 Aug 2021
Focussing on the sugarcane and grazing industries in GBR catchments, this project will address Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan knowledge needs by synthesising existing knowledge around human dimensions and improved land management practice adoption. It will explore potential solutions to several knowledge gaps through a number of discrete, multilayered and integrated action-based research foci (ABRF). The focus of targeted investigations emerging from the literature review include: a) causes of transaction costs incurred by graziers when improving land management practice (and approaches to overcome these); b) the impact of social capital, trust and power dynamics on technology adoption (cane growers) and c) grazier perceived and actual risk of engagement in improved land management practices and programs.
The Solar Rebound and Renewable Energy Adoption in the Sunshine State (Old ID 27450)
Breda McCarthy
15 Jan 2022 - 31 Dec 2022
This research seeks to understand consumers' motivations for, and barriers to, installing rooftop solar and battery storage and to model the factors that drive and mitigate the solar rebound effect.
e-beef Evaluation Project. (Old ID 27641)
Rachel Hay
11 May 2022 - 30 Sep 2022
The project will evaluate the outcomes of the e-beef Project. The e-beef project worked with selected grazing businesses (Smart Farms) and groups of grazing businesses (Innovation Hubs) in regional Qld to demonstrate and trial innovative technologies that aimed to improve the accuracy and timeliness of livestock perfrmance and pasture data. It was expected that the e-beef project would assist grazing businesses to make informed management decisions based on recorded data. The e-beef evaluation project outsomes will inform future research and activity in Innovation and Commercialisation Projects.
Digital Extension Toolbox (Old ID 26535)
Rachel Hay
01 Mar 2019 - 31 Jul 2019
To encourage practice change in agriculture, DAF extension staff must be able to leverage "social" to deliver targeted and timely messages to discreet stakeholder groups at the hyper-local, project or peer level. This proposal is for the creation of a Digital Extension Toolbox, inclusive of a Community of Practice and Best Practice guidelines: a dynamic action-learing and risk management project designed to nimbly support staff in performing their work agilely over social engagement channels. Thisis is a pilot, desinged as an agile sprint, running from Feb-Jun 2019. During this time, we will develop a Best Management Practice (BMP) for each of four social engagement channels. Once a BMP has been deemed ready for trial, we will develop a Community of Practice and intiate a live trial. Online activity will be monitored, engagement metrics collected and oversight propvided by our 'Toolbox Investors': a matrix of committed internal stakeholders. The end goal being to provide DAF extension staff with a Toolbox full of relevant social media tools and instructions for their safe use.
Drought and Heatwave Social Network Analysis
Rachel Hay
04 Feb 2024 - 30 Sep 2024
The project aims to complete a whole of network analysis to identify the structure and characteristics of drought and climate resilience actors (for example, programs and organisations that have a climate/drought/heatwave focus) to identify groups, clusters, or gaps within the network. The analysis will view through a dynamic lens to understand the dynamic nature of policy over time. Social Network Analysis is a powerful tool used to understand complex systems, identify key actors, to detect communities and investigate structural roles that can assist in the prediction of future interactions that will deliver upon the projects objectives.
Soil Extension through the Regional Soils Coordinator, TNQ Hub (Old ID 27529)
Rachel Hay
14 Feb 2022 - 30 Aug 2024
The funding will assist the TNQ Hub to carry out extension activities in line with National Landcare Program: Smart Farms Soil Extension Activities and support the National Soil Monitoring and Incentives Pilot Program to deliver a National Community of Practice to improve soil health and management. The Regional Soils Coordinator will support the Building Landcare Community and Capacity program to provide more effective, targeted, and integrated soil services that support land managers with practical tools and information to make better evidence-based management decisions for future growing seasons, including an increased uptake of soil testing and interpretation of results that lead to improved sustainable soil management practices. These projects outcomes contribute to the Australian Government National Soils Strategy, $214.9 million over 4 years.
BeefVantage: AI-Powered Beef Agriculture Solution Hub (Old ID 31108)
Carrie Wilson
01 Sep 2023 - 29 Nov 2024
The project is to develop a language-based AI-powered tool that will rapidly guide beef producers to relevant solutions to solve their on-farm problems. The BeefVantage interface efficiently connects farmers and their advisors to relevant solutions, swiftly navigating them through on-farm challenges for enhanced productivity and sustainable outcomes. First, by analysing domain-specific data, we aim to create a dataset that is pre-processed. This dataset will be used to fine-tune a Large Language Model, so that farmers and their advisors can enter queries (such as problems or challenges that they are facing), and the system will recommend solutions (such as AgTech products or relevant knowledge) for their consideration. The AI MVP will create value by revealing insights from existing data that have previously been missed, and help facilitate conversations between extension agents and producers, and ultimately provide a platform for beef producers to rapidly find solutions that are relevant to their situation and needs. Additionally, this system will help provide consistency in information provided by different extension officers/bodies, as it can be confusing for farmers when they receive differing advice from different advisors.
Interregional migration: who decides to move?
- 2022
- Scientific Press
- Researchers:Diana CastorinaRiccardo Welters
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