The value of large-scale behavioural models for understanding socio-ecological interactions

Models that attempt to represent human behaviour within the land system are usually applied over relatively small geographical extents, with larger-scale applications forced to make broad assumptions that emphasise macro-economic drivers of land use change. One of the consequences of such simplifying assumptions is that they obscure many of the non-economic links between land management and the natural environment. These links include land managers’ motivations to improve environmental conditions, their reliance on a range of ecosystem services, and their adherence to social or cultural norms related to environmental management practices. Using national to continental (European) scale applications of an agent-based modelling framework, we demonstrate the impacts of non-economic behaviours on land system outcomes, and in particular their role in shaping socio-ecological interactions. We highlight the additional ‘points of contact’ between behavioural and ecological models, and develop examples of coupled models at different levels of spatial and ecological detail. We find that including both behavioural and ecological mechanisms produces distinct socio-ecological dynamics that consistently diverge from those produced by uncoupled or non-behavioural models. We discuss the challenges of calibrating, evaluating and validating such models, particularly given the difficulties of identifying appropriate data. We nevertheless conclude that large-scale behavioural models are important tools not only for understanding individual and social behaviour in the land system, but also for representing crucial interactions between social and ecological dynamics.