Farmer adoption of pasture renewal practices: the influence of credible information sources

Effective pasture management needs active participation by farmers in pasture renewal practices (PRPs). Previous literature, however, state that the rate and extent of adoption by farmers is influenced by farmers’ attitudes toward PRPs. It is therefore the purpose of this paper to understand whether factors, including attitudes, confidence, and satisfactions of farmers affect their decision-making on PRPs, in particular heterogeneous characteristics of farmers are considered. Specifically, this paper addresses the impact of information source regarding farmers’ adoption of PRPs. Factor analysis method was applied to survey data of dairy farmers in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand. Dairy farmers are clustered to different groups according to their attitudes, confidence, satisfactions and rankings of information sources to adopt PRPs. Furthermore, correlation analysis was used to elicit whether and how farmers’ attitudes, confidence and satisfaction related to perceived credence of information sources. The results show that farmers have less variance in their satisfaction and confidence regarding PRPs compared to their attitudes to PRPs and their perceptions of usefulness of information sources. To a large extent, farmers’ satisfaction of PRPs is correlated with their attitudes; the unsatisfied attitudes are also correlated with low credence of information source at different levels. Inter alia, farmers in the ‘good financial and time management’ group tend to value the information from industrial websites and publications; while those valuing accessibility to information and performance of farm systems tend to gather information from professional consultants and seed companies. On the basis of the empirical evidence presented, policymakers, industry organisations, as well as rural professionals would be well advised to harness the diverse set of attitudes and confidence of farmers when designing supporting mechanism and programs. In particular, the future programs need to take into account the most efficient information source for different groups of farmers to adopt PRPs.