Producer Acceptance of Alternative Extension Services in the Appalachian Region

ABSTRACT

Current and potential aquaculture producers were surveyed to examine extension support and to determine how alternative extension program attributes would be accepted by current and potential aquaculture producers. The attributes evaluated were farm visits, consultation availability and method, workshops, fish disease diagnostics, aquaculture support providers, and cooperative extension publications. This study used a full-profile conjoint experiment, which utilizes orthogonal arrays to generate the smallest statistically efficient design, in which respondents rate a set of hypothetical services. The relative importance of the attributes was calculated, and logistic regression was used to compute user probabilities for acceptance of different feasible service configurations. Farm visits carried the greatest weight among the attributes evaluated. The results quantify the desire by aquaculture farmers to maintain the status quo of extension services. Eliminating farm visits would significantly reduce a program's approval rating. The results also show that adjustments in government-sponsored programs can be designed so that adverse impacts can be minimized for most of the program constituents.