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Abstract Farmers' conservation decisions are central to addressing regional environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, water quality impairment, or climate change. However, three decades of substantial investment in agri-environmental programs has not yielded widespread adoption or improved environmental outcomes. It remains difficult to explain why farmers adopt despite an extensive body of research on the topic. One possible reason for this is that researchers are limiting the types of metrics they are analyzing to explain farmer decisions. We systematically and critically evaluated the social science adoption literature to address three important gaps: (1) How are adoption studies measuring adoption effectiveness? (2) How do studies integrate individual farmer perspectives into broader institutional (i.e., social and governance) contexts? (3) What are the most prevalent metrics that adoption research uses to characterize the human-natural system? We coded 174 studies and found that only 10% connect adoption decisions to conservation outcomes or undertake longitudinal research, while the dominant approach in adoption research excludes the institutional contexts in which farmers are situated. The most prevalent metrics focus on farmer demographics, financial and technical capacity to adopt, and economic motivations. The lack of attention to both conservation outcomes and longitudinal studies limits researchers' ability to analyze the effectiveness of CP adoption. To advance our understanding of adoption, we recommend that future research measure conservation outcomes and track how knowledge about adoption effectiveness feeds back into farmer perceptions and social norms towards adoption. Research should also consistently measure how agri-environmental programs mediate the social acceptability of adoption. Lastly, institutional metrics that can be widely incorporated into coupled human-natural systems research will advance synthesis efforts to better explain why farmers adoption conservation practices. Highlights • Only 10% of studies measure the effectiveness of adopted conservation practices. • Few studies situate farmer decisions in their broader institutional context. • The diversity of metrics characterizing adoption limits synthesis opportunities. • Future research should measure outcomes to identify system feedbacks. • Future research should address individual and institutional dynamics jointly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climate-driven risks were an emerging but limited driver of cover crop adoption. • Farmers depicted adoption as creating tradeoffs rather than win-win outcomes. • Climate change may encourage or discourage adoption because of tradeoffs. • Outreach should prioritize involving farmers in shared problem-solving. • Policy changes should help farmers manage adoption tradeoffs to prevent abandonment. Cover crops represent a potential win-win opportunity to promote climate resilience by helping farmers adapt to climate risks while simultaneously mitigating multiple environmental impacts from agriculture. However, cover crop adoption rates are increasing slowly and cover less than 5% of U.S. croplands. In contrast, several Indiana counties in the southern Wabash River Basin have cover crops on more than 20 % of farmland. This qualitative study draws on 33 semi-structured interviews with farmers to understand whether climate risks are driving the above-average rates of adoption in this area. Our purposive sample of farmers was guided by whether they farmed flood-prone areas along the White and Wabash Rivers, thus making them especially sensitive to increasing flood risks from climate change. We found that while climate risks, particularly intensifying rainfall events, were a factor in some cases, most adoption was a longstanding effort to control wind-erosion on hilly areas with sandy soils. We also found that farmers experienced challenges with adoption following successful establishment of cover crops tied to climate-driven ecosystem responses. Greater spring precipitation delayed cash crop planting because of moisture retention and intensified pest pressures from increased habitat has caused replanting of cash crop seeds. Responses indicate that climate risks have mixed effects that may either discourage or encourage cover crop adoption depending on whether future outreach and policy interventions can help farmers overcome the adoption challenges they encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]