Determinants of the Use of Information: An Empirical Study of German Pig Farmers

Due to growing expectations for quality and safety of food products and an increasing demand for more transparent food supply chains, pork production faces new challenges. In the course of this development, chain-wide communication has gained importance in agribusiness. Nonetheless, existing approaches focus primarily on information supply, whereas the use of information for managerial decision-making has only rarely been highlighted. This research gap is addressed in this paper on the basis of a large-scale empirical study of animal health management on German pig farms. By applying factor and multinomial logistic regression analyses, this study identifies determinants of the use of information as well as ways to improve information use on farms. It shows that factors like intrinsic motivation and farmer’s competence have a significant influence on information use.