Inclination to Join Farming among College Students in Southern Taiwan

• Main Authors: Wei-Fu Chen, 陳威夫
• Other Authors: Albert Wenben Lai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/kuh6s6

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 國際經營管理碩士班 === 97 === Since recent years, while issues of environmental protection and green industries have been discussed globally, Taiwan’s agricultural industry has attracted much attention. The local and central governments alike began to promote many agri-facilitating strategies and measures, such as agri-tourism, green technology, and renovation of rural villages. However, on the other hand, the farming population keep on declining through the years, as percentage which youngsters choose farming as an occupation remain significantly low. The current research explored the contemporary Taiwanese college student’s perception of farm living, cognition of agricultural industries, their intentions to choose farming career in various situations, and factors influencing their occupation decisions. The theoretic constructs involved in the present study included: perception of rural living, attitude toward agriculture, knowledge of agricultural industries, values of occupation and intention to join farming. In addition, family supports and understanding of government’s promotion for farming were included also as two practical considerations. The valid empirical sample of the study are 543 college students randomly collected from five public or private universities in southern Taiwan. Data analysis revealed that the reliability and validity of the measuring scales all reached adequate standards, showing good quality of the data. In the research results, regarding the interactive relationship among the main variables, most of the hypothesis obtained supports from the data with statistically significance. Yet, only a few clues could be seen vis-à-vis the higher level of variable relationships, due to the limitation of the applied analysis tool of regression.