Educational Need Assessment of Jahrom County Citrus Growers in Agricultural E-commerce Using the Borich Need Assessment Model

The objective of this study was to assess the educational needs of Jahrom citrus growers in agricultural e-commerce using the Borich need assessment model. For this purpose, a quantitative research method based on the survey was used. The statistical population consisted of Khafr and central parts of Jahrom county, which are the center of citrus production in this county (N = 906). The Krejcie and Morgan table was used to determine the sample size. 270 citrus growers were selected by the stratified random sampling method with the appropriate assignment from two parts of Khafr and central of Jahrom county. A two-part questionnaire was used for data collection. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a number of experts and the reliability of the questionnaires was confirmed using ordinal alpha values of 0.88 and 0.92, respectively, for the variables of importance and ability. According to the mean weighted discrepancy scores between importance and capability, among 28 educational topics, 18 were identified as the educational priorities. In order to develop e-commerce activities, creating/strengthening of these should be placed at the top of the training programs. The results of the F-statistic of one-way ANOVA test showed that the educational needs of older and less educated groups were higher than those of younger and more educated individuals. The results of multivariate regression analysis also showed that the variables of age, level of education and income in a model could explain 39.8% of the variations of educational needs.