Restoring interlocking forest-agricultural landscapes— forest-agricscapes —to sustainably supply ecosystem services for socio-ecological well-being is one of Malawi’s priorities. Engaging local farmers is crucial in implementing restoration schemes. While farmers’ land-use decisions shape land-use/cover and changes (LUCC) and ecological conditions, why and how they decide to embrace restoration activities is poorly understood and neglected in forest-agricscape restoration. We analyze the nature of farmers’ restoration decisions, both individually and collectively, in Central Malawi using a mixed-method analysis. We characterize, qualitatively and quantitatively, the underlying contextual rationales, motives, benefits, and incentives. Identified decision-making rules reflect diverse and nuanced goal frames of relative importance that are featured in various combinations. We categorize the decision-making rules as: problem-solving oriented, resource/material-constrained, benefits-oriented, incentive-based, peers/leaders-influenced, knowledge/skill-dependent, altruistic-oriented, rules/norms-constrained, economic capacity-dependent, awareness-dependent, and risk averse-oriented. We link them with the corresponding vegetation- and non-vegetation-based restoration practices to depict the overall decision-making processes. Findings advance the representation of farmers’ decision rules and behavioral responses in computational agent-based modeling (ABM), through the decomposition of empirical data. The approach used can inform other modeling works attempting to better capture social actors’ decision rules. Such LUCC-ABMs are valuable for exploring spatially explicit outcomes of restoration investments by modeling such decision-making processes and policy scenarios.

中文翻译：

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改进 LUCC-ABM 中决策规则的表示：以马拉维中部景观恢复农民决策为例

恢复相互关联的森林-农业景观——森林-农业景观——以可持续地为社会生态福祉提供生态系统服务是马拉维的优先事项之一。当地农民的参与对于实施恢复计划至关重要。虽然农民的土地利用决定会影响土地利用/覆盖和变化 (LUCC) 和生态条件，但在森林农业景观恢复中，他们为何以及如何决定接受恢复活动却知之甚少，也被忽视了。我们使用混合方法分析了马拉维中部农民个人和集体恢复决策的性质。我们定性和定量地描述了潜在的背景理由、动机、利益和激励。确定的决策规则反映了以各种组合为特征的相对重要的多样化和细微差别的目标框架。我们将决策规则分类为：解决问题导向、资源/物质约束、利益导向、激励导向、同伴/领导影响、知识/技能依赖、利他导向、规则/规范约束、经济能力依赖、意识依赖和风险规避导向。我们将它们与相应的基于植被和非植被的恢复实践联系起来，以描述整体决策过程。通过分解经验数据，研究结果在基于计算代理的建模 (ABM) 中推进了农民决策规则和行为响应的表示。所使用的方法可以为其他建模工作提供信息，以更好地捕捉社会参与者的决策规则。这种 LUCC-ABM 通过对此类决策过程和政策情景建模，对于探索恢复投资的空间明确结果很有价值。