An investigation of entrepreneurial and decision making behaviors of greenhouse vegetable producers in Antalya province

Greenhouse vegetable production is at an advanced level in Antalya province, which has an important place in point of agricultural production in Turkey. Along with the employment of rural population, it meets the demands of domestic and foreign markets and contributes to the national economy. Globalization of today's agricultural markets indicates the need for agricultural operators to engage in entrepreneurial behavior in order to provide a more effective competition. In this context, entrepreneurial behaviors and decision-making mechanisms of producers have become important issues to be dwelled on. In this study, the factors which affect entrepreneurial behaviors and decisions of greenhouse producers were investigated. Intentions, attitudes, subejctive norms and perceived behavioral controls and the compability of producers with entrepreneurial behaviors were examined thanks to reliability analysis. In the scope of the study, effects of behavioral, normative and control beliefs on stated components and relations with each other has examined by applying of correlation analysis. As a result of this survey which has been conducted with 180 greenhouse vegetable producers in the districts of Antalya, it was found that entrepreneurial intentions, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral controls of farmers were positive and measurement of these variables were coherent. Attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioral controls of farmers were also positively related with each other. It was concluded that general attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioral controls of farmers towards entrepreneurial behavior had positive correlations with their behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs respectively. Especially it was observed that the attitude towards entrepreneurship varies in the same direction with the belief about increasing sales just as social norms changes by the sense of feeling pressure of farmers from their colleagues.