Kliebenstein, James; Barrett, D. A.; Heffernan, W. D.; Kirtley, C. L.

North Central Journal of Agricultural Economics Vol. 2 no. 2 (July 1980): 131-136.

Farmers' perceptions of benefits they receive from farming affect their decision making. In decision model development, it is important to have insight into these benefits. This study tests the relative importance of farmers' benefit values through use of discriminant analysis. Benefits received were economic and non-economic. It appears that farmers have "threshold" security levels. Discriminant analysis indicated that farmer respondents place similar values on many of the benefits. Effective categorization of farmers was not achieved using such factors as debt load, profitability measures, acres, tenancy, age, and their benefit response values.