The Characteristics of Farmers and Paying Willingness for Information

In the knowledge-based economy, information, information cost and information benefit that farmers acquire are bound to influence their decision making. This study is based on 120 questionnaires from 9 towns (including 38 villages) of Qingbaijiang district, Sichuan Province. The study examines the compact of the characteristics of the farmers on the paying willingness for information. The findings show that the paying willingness of the farmers are affected by education, age, per-income, the proportion of agricultural income, bearing ability to information risk, action, satisfaction degree, and the proportion of household labor. The relationship between paying willingness and these factors (not include satisfaction degree) is positive .In addition, authors suggest that farmers’ awareness and level of demand, as well as ability of applying information to agricultural production, should be improved, and farmer-oriented mode of diversified information services might be formed.