Entrepreneur Farmers: How does a beginning farmer's race influence consumer decisions?

This study evaluates whether farmers’ racial background and farming experience affect consumers’ willingness to support farmers and their preferences for agricultural products. An online experiment will be conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk). The experiment consists of a between-subject design where participants will be randomly assigned to one of five treatments. In the five treatment groups, the (beginning) farmers supportive program will be introduced to participants using a picture and name of a farmer along with a description of the program. The picture will be shown in a salient position on the screen. Besides the baseline control group where we introduce regular farmers, the difference across the rest of four treatment groups is the race of the farmer. In the race control group, the picture will only show the shape/silhouette of a farmer without any identification of racial background. In treatments 1, 2, and 3, the farmer shown in the picture will correspond to White, African American, and Hispanic farmers, respectively. There will be no written statement referring to the race of the farmer. Following the manipulation, subjects will be asked to participate in a real-incentivized BDM auction, dictator game, effort task, and finally filled out a demographic/behavioral survey. By comparing task outcomes across treatments, we will test for potential effects of farmers’ race on consumers' willingness to support beginning farmers and willingness to pay for beginning farmers produced agricultural products.