Abstract
Multi-species grasslands and their various benefits have been highlighted in recent research and are currently gaining importance in agricultural practice. To improve the effective transfer of the scientific knowledge to agricultural practice, it is necessary to understand farmers' intention to use practices that promote multi-species swards. Hence, we constructed a survey for European livestock farmers based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour to explore their intention to work with diverse seed mixtures to establish multi-species grasslands. Using a structural equation model (n = 690), we found that the perceived behavioural control, i.e. farmers' perception to be able to use diverse seed mixtures, was the main factor for farmers' intention. Hereby, the main driver was the compatibility of the practice with the existing farm infrastructure (e.g. pasture area or farm size). Furthermore, the perceived behavioural control correlated positively with the farmers' attitude towards the behaviour and with the subjective norm, which is the farmers' concern about the views of persons important for them. We concluded that it is necessary that diverse seed mixtures are suitable for a wide range of European farm infrastructures to promote multi-species grasslands and to upscale their adoption. Additionally, farmers' personal networks may be important to further promote the use.