BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS OF INVESTMENT DECISIONS ON FARMS

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the behavioral factors that impact the investment decisions made by farm managers. A survey carried out in 2023 with 152 farms located in Greater Poland was the source of empirical materials. The study suggests that overconfidence and over-optimism are not widespread in the group surveyed. In assessing their own knowledge of investment topics, 74% of farmers claimed to be equally competent as other agricultural producers. When preparing the implementation of an investment, most respondents (47%) foresee a neutral scenario of how the situation could development, 20% for an optimistic scenario and only 13% pick a pessimistic one. Nearly 25% of interviewees admitted to rely on the brand’s reputation when choosing a fixed asset (the availability heuristic). The vast majority of farmers surveyed (65%) replied that investing their own funds requires a more in-depth analysis. This corroborates the conclusions made by Richard Thaler and Eric Johnson who discovered that people are less willing to risk their own hardearned money.