Industrial and Academic Experts: Do They Differ in Their Weighting of Criteria for Agricultural Planning?

Abstract

Agricultural planning models account for changing weather conditions and for high food price volatility. The maximum profit of farmers is one of the common criteria in these models. In this study I compare expert opinions on the importance of the criteria of maximum profit in a normal year, a dry year, and a year when agricultural prices rise substantially relative to a previous year. Total 32 experts in the North-Eastern Israel were interviewed: 15 of them working in agriculture (industry experts) and 17 – academic experts. Knowing weights of criteria is necessary for applying various multi-criteria techniques for handling weather and price uncertainties. The importance of the criteria was estimated from the collected expert opinions using the method of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The experts answered questions about pairs of the criteria. All answers were reported on the 5-point scale that included “much more important”, “more important”, “the same importance”, “less important”, “much less important”. Then the balanced scale was used to give numeric values to the answers. Consistency ratios for every expert were calculated based on the given answers. The criterion “profit in a normal year” was the most important one. For academic experts this criterion was significantly less important, and the criterion of profit in a dry year was more important as compared to industrial experts. Almost the same percent in both categories of experts, 82-87%, were identified as loss averse persons. The coefficient of loss aversion was significantly higher for academic experts.