The socio-economic analysis of agritourism in two rural communities in the Limpopo Province

Abstract

The main aim of the study was to analyze the socio-economic variables effecting agritourism business using data from two rural communities of the Limpopo province, Nwa’metwa and Lenyenye. The results showed that there are significant socio-economic differences among agritourism and non-agritourism farmers. The socio-economic variables used are literacy, gender, age, land size and family size. Two multinomial models were used to model agritourism behavior. The two models, namely fully and partially registered agritourism farmers were estimated. Non-registered agritourism farmers were used as the reference group. These models denoted the relative probability of both fully and partially registered agritourism farmers to the probability of the non-registered agritourism farmers.

The logarithm results implied that older farmers were less likely to prefer to operate business as a fully or partially registered agritourism farmer compared to the non-registered agritourism group. Farmers’ decisions in business operation were informed by their level of education, experience as well as social networks.