ŽigaMalekaPeter H.Verburgab
Department of Environmental Geography, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Available online 23 September 2020.

  • How such local-scale patterns of decision-making can be used to explain land-use change globally is unknown.
  • Using a collection of local studies from a literature review, we studied the contextual conditions of different modes of land-use change decision-making and present global maps of the potential distribution of decision-making in land-use change.
  • Decision-making in land-use can be explained, to a large extent, by the socio-economic, climatic and soil conditions of a location, captured by global data proxies of these conditions.

Decision-making case-studies, types and objectives

Characteristics of land-use decision-making types:

  • The survivalist
  • The subsistence-oriented smallholder
  • Market-oriented smallholder
  • Professional commercialist
  • Professional intensifier
  • Eco-agriculturalist

Methodological steps of the study

contextual conditions

Explanatory variable used in contextual conditions: temperature, precipitation, aridity, altitude, slope, soil conditions, socio-economic conditions (population density, poverty, child malnutrition, GDP per capita, distance to roads, etc.)

Statistical analysis

Three regression models used in three stages.