Determining Risk Attitude of Rice Farmers into inputs risk in Rasht County: Safety First Model

Since agricultural activities are inherently risky and farmers have to make decisions in such situations, their decision-making in a context of risk depends on their attitude to risk. In other words, different attitudes, cause people making different decisions in similar situations. In this study, it is tried to determine the attitude of farmers in Rasht county about risk based on four inputs of nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, poison and labour using the Safety First Model. The required data was obtained by filling out questionnaires and face to face interview with 221 rice farmers in year1396 using two-stage cluster sampling method. The results of the study indicate that all of rice farmers are intermediate risk averse towards the use of nitrate fertilizers (urea), phosphate fertilizer and poison (herbicide). This type of attitude can lead to the use of more fertilizers and poisons which result in unhealthy crops and environmental pollution. But rice farmers have different attitudes in terms of labour input, with almost 83% of them are risk averse and only about 17% are risk prefer.