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2 July 2019 Home on the Digital Range: Ranchers' Web Access and Use
Shayan Ghajar , María E. Fernández-Giménez , Hailey Wilmer
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Abstract

Access to the Internet continues to grow in rural areas, ensuring ranchers will have increasing opportunities to use the Web to find information about management practices that may provide them ecological and financial benefits. Although past studies have examined the role of the Internet in informing daily decision making by agricultural producers, no studies have focused specifically on the use of the Internet by ranchers in the western United States. This study uses a mixed-methods approach (a survey and semistructured interviews) to assess the extent and patterns of ranchers' Internet use in Colorado and Wyoming, identify barriers to greater use, and establish a typology of Web use behavior by ranchers. Our findings indicate that Internet use is widespread and that age, education, and risk tolerance predict the extent to which a rancher will rely on the Internet for day-to-day ranch management. A cluster analysis delineated four distinct types of Web usage among ranchers: uninfluenced, focused on sales and herd management, moderately influenced, and an Internet-reliant type. Outreach personnel can use this classification to determine the potential utility of digital outreach tools for their programming on the basis of their target audience and outreach topics.

© 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Society for Range Management.
Shayan Ghajar , María E. Fernández-Giménez , and Hailey Wilmer "Home on the Digital Range: Ranchers' Web Access and Use," Rangeland Ecology and Management 72(4), 711-720, (2 July 2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2018.12.009
Received: 14 March 2018; Accepted: 22 December 2018; Published: 2 July 2019
KEYWORDS
cluster analysis
decision making
mixed methods
online Extension
rancher survey
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