The Analysis of Producers' Technology İnvestment İntentions Within the Framework of Extended Theory of Planned Behavior

Abstract

This study is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and expands this main framework by including the constructs of education, knowledge acquisition and access to financial resources. In this study conducted on 270 farmers in Konya -an important agricultural region of Turkey-, a stratified sampling design was employed with a survey instrument adapted from previously validated measurements. Robust reliability and validity were confirmed for constructs related to attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, knowledge acquisition and access to financial resources through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling approach. The results obtained show that attitude, subjective norms and knowledge acquisition significantly increase the perceived behavioral control of farmers. On the other hand, there is an indirect relationship between perceived behavioral control and technology investment intention through the access to finance, which indicates that access to financial resources emerges as a pivotal factor determining technological investment intentions. These results imply that it is important to improve the farmers' financial capacity and information support to promote technology adoption. In this context, policy makers and agencies working in the field of agricultural development need to spearhead the process of the financial barriers and knowledge resources, by first selecting credit facilities, providing government subsidies and later knowledge transfer.