The role of attitudes and objectives in farmer decision making: Business and environmentally-oriented behaviour in Scotland

Despite considerable effort to understand and represent decision making by fanners, there has been little attempt to integrate socio-economic, psychol ogical and fanning variables within a comprehensive framework. This paper a ttempts to do this in the context of two types of farming behaviour - busin ess and environmental - for a sample of over 200 Scottish farmers. Using va riables covering their attitudes, objectives and behaviours relevant to man y aspects of farming, we proposed mediating variables models of business-or iented and environmentally-oriented farming behaviours. Structural equation modelling was used to test the adequacy of the proposed models. The result s of the study emphasise the importance of psychological factors in the dec ision making of farmers.