Conservation program enrollment involves two distinct decisions—whether to participate and
how much land to commit—yet most empirical work treats these as a single binary outcome.
Using a double-hurdle model applied to survey data from corn-belt crop producers, this study
jointly examines the determinants of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) participation and
enrollment intensity, with particular attention to farmer typologies and Big-Five-adjacent
personality traits. For the participation decision, personality trait proxies are the primary
behavioral drivers. Conscientiousness and openness to conservation innovation each significantly
increase the probability of enrollment, while farmer typologies—including farm survival,
productivist, and traditionalist types—play no independent role once behavioral and structural
factors are accounted for. For the enrollment intensity decision, the set of significant predictors
shifts considerably. Productivist orientation emerges as the strongest negative predictor of land
share committed, while conscientiousness retains a positive but weaker association with
enrollment intensity. Social interaction—willingness to coordinate bids with neighboring
producers—is the most robust positive predictor, suggesting that peer coordination matters more
for the scale of land committed than for the initial enrollment decision. These findings
demonstrate that participation and enrollment intensity are governed by distinct behavioral and
economic processes, and that incorporating farmer typologies and personality traits into
conservation program analysis can meaningfully improve our understanding of who enrolls in
CRP and to what extent.
