Owner motivation in small size family farms: insight form an exploratory study on ornamental plant industry

This case study aims to analyse the owner motivations in the context of the ornamental plant sector. The analysis was designed in order to identify the owners motivations within family farm and it was conducted by segmenting a sample of ornamental plant firms into two sub-samples with different production cycle and economic size farm. Results allow to highlight how passion and inheritance items are particularly relevant for owners in both groups, while significant differences were observed between two sub samples concerning training education, profitability as well as the owner’s experience. The findings also show interesting implication about the owner’s decision making. Despite this study reports the results for a specific region and sector, its empirical applications could reasonably be extensible to other agricultural sectors, being indicative of the ongoing dynamics for modern agricultural productions of Mediterranean basin, where there remains a strong link between businesses and socio-familiar context.