Empirical models of farmer behaviour using psychological, social and economic variables. Part I: Linear modelling

Abstract The analysis of social science data is increasingly dependent on the construction of mathematical models to predict and explain behaviour. This and the following paper have two objectives. The first objective is to describe some of the results of a recent survey on farmer decision-making and to present a number of models which have been developed using the data from this survey. The second objective is to use these models as a framework for a general discussion of the wide range of techniques available for the modelling of psychological, social and economic data. The classification of models into categories such as mechanistic and empirical, and the range of mathematical techniques available are described. The use of linear modelling is illustrated with examples from the data.