Barriers to Meteorological Information Use by Farmers: A Mixed Methods Analysis

Effective use of meteorological information has paramount importance in decreasing farmers' vulnerability towards climate variability. Analyzing the barriers to meteorological information use by farmers was the main aim of the study. In order to achieve this goal, the research was conducted through two qualitative and quantitative phases. The purpose of first phase was to identify the basic concepts associated with barriers to meteorological information use. Therefore, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with the farmers of Naghadeh County based on purposeful snowball sampling method. The purpose of second phase was to reduce the concepts that had been extracted from in-depth interviews conducted in the previous phase and then categorize them into some general factors using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). All of the farmers in Naghadeh County (N = 9006) were the statistical population of this phase which 368 of them were selected as the sample using stratified random sampling method. Research tool was a close-ended questionnaire that developed based on the concepts identified from the qualitative phase. The validity and reliability of questionnaire were confirmed by a panel of academic experts as well as item-total-correlation coefficients, respectively. The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that the barriers of meteorological information use included "educational-communicative", "normative", "informational", "infrastructural-political", and "professional-economic" barriers. These five factors could account for 54.96% of the variance of barriers to meteorological information use. Finally, it was recommended that mass media and social networks can be used as a facilitating tool for meteorological information use.