The success of a bioenergy policy relies largely on the wide adoption of perennial energy crops at the farm-scale. This study uses survey data to examine potential adoption decisions by farmers in the US Midwest and the causal effects of various direct and indirect influencing factors, especially heterogeneous preferences of farmers. A Bayesian network (BN) model is developed to delineate the causal-relationship between farmers adoption decisions and the influencing factors. We find a dominating role of economic factors and a non-negligible impact of non-economic factors, such as the perceived environmental benefits and the extent of familiarity with perennial energy crops. To examine the effect of heterogeneity in farmer preferences, we classify the surveyed farmers into four categories based on their attitudes toward the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of perennial energy crops. We identify statistically significant between-group differences in the responses of the four types of farmers to the various influencing factors. Our findings contribute to disentangling the complicated motivations that will influence perennial energy crop adoption decisions and provide implications for more targeted policy development that need to consider the heterogeneous drivers of farmer decisions about land use.

生物能源政策的成功在很大程度上取决于在农场范围内广泛采用多年生能源作物。本研究使用调查数据来检查美国中西部农民的潜在采用决策以及各种直接和间接影响因素的因果效应，尤其是农民的异质偏好。开发了贝叶斯网络 (BN) 模型来描绘农民采用决策与影响因素之间的因果关系。我们发现经济因素的主导作用和非经济因素的不可忽视的影响，例如感知的环境效益和对多年生能源作物的熟悉程度。为了检验异质性对农民偏好的影响，我们根据农民对经济、社会、和多年生能源作物的环境维度。我们确定了四类农民对各种影响因素的反应在统计学上显着的组间差异。我们的研究结果有助于理清影响多年生能源作物采用决策的复杂动机，并为更有针对性的政策制定提供启示，这些政策制定需要考虑农民关于土地使用决策的异质性驱动因素。