PhD Thesis project: Structural change in rural Europe: Land-use and labour behavior

The cumulative PhD study has been designed as a form of compilation of articles that analyze questions related to decision-making processes in rural areas. The study aims to understand rural individuals’ behavior in social situations where positions in a social network influence the decisions. The scoped behaviors include adaption of innovative farming practices (e.g. agri-environmental farming practices and innovative farming techniques) and decisions on rural labor markets. Selected study case regions from Germany and Slovenia are mainly drawn from three data sets:

1. German Labour Force Survey data (2002-2009) obtained during project PRIMA – PRototypical policy Impact on Multifunctional Activities in rural municipalities;
2. German organic farmers survey (2008) collected during the project FoodIMA – EU Food Industry Dynamics and Methodological Advances; and
3. Slovenian Farm Accountancy Data (2004-2010) provided by the Slovenian Ministry of Agriculture and Environment.

The analyses is based on discrete choice models (e.g. logit and multinominal logit) and a social network approach that relies on behavior rules at the individual level.