insurance (either due to cost or coverage for the activities offered) make agritourism a particularly difficult enterprise.
Figure 2. Top Ten Challenges Identified by Agritourism Operators
The project team conducted in-depth analyses, focusing on different aspects of the survey. Quella et al. (2020) conducted a qualitative analysis of the open- ended questions to investigate the motivations of farmers offering agritourism. The results show that non-monetary motivations (specifically community engagement and leadership) are important for farmers when they decide to start offering agritourism activities. Turning to monetary motivations, Hollas et al. (2021) examined the profitability of responding agritourism operations. The authors found that operators with more agritourism experience (measured in years) were more likely to be profitable with agritourism efforts. They also found that larger agritourism businesses (measured in revenue and acreage), and those that offer entertainment and/or on-farm direct sales had positive associations with profitability. Respondents that either identified as female and/or offered off-farm sales were less likely to be profitable. Wang et al. (2021) used a probit regression model to analyze the perceived accessibility of resources and support for agritourism operators across the four regions, with the Northeast region as the baseline. They found that agritourism liability (insurance) is an issue that all regions share as a common concern. However, some challenges are more region-specific. For example, e- connectivity is a major issue in the Southern region. This is problematic because operators rely on a stable internet connection for marketing
2021 NET Conference Proceedings
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