EMPIRICAL-MODELS OF FARMER BEHAVIOR USING PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC VARIABLES - PART I - LINEAR MODELING

The analysis of social science data is increasingly dependent on the c onstruction of mathematical models to predict and explain behaviour. T his and the following paper have two objectives. The first objective i s to describe some of the results of a recent survey on farmer decisio n-making and to present a number of models which have been developed u sing the data from this survey. The second objective is to use these m odels as a framework for a general discussion of the wide range of tec hniques available for the modelling of psychological, social and econo mic data. The classification of models into categories such as mechani stic and empirical, and the range of mathematical techniques available are described. The use of linear modelling is illustrated with exampl es from the data. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.