The Economics of Agricultural Information: Factors Affecting Commercial Farmers' Information Strategies in Ohio

Information-seeking behavior is one of the most enduring subjects in the marketing and agribusiness literature. Based on a mail survey of 3,000 randomly selected farmers in Ohio, this study contributes empirical evidence about differences in farmers’ information strategies regarding type, amount, and sources of information, and identifies factors that explain the variation in farmers’ information search behavior. Farmers split into four distinct search typologies. Farmers’ attitudes toward search, farm sales, years farming, Internet access, and farm type were good predictors of search strategies, underscoring the value of the clustering approach for farmer segmentation.