Farm‐based entrepreneurs: what triggers the start‐up of new business activities?

Abstract

This exploratory study combines three theoretical approaches to investigate why farmers start additional business activities: the rural sociology perspective, the opportunity perspective and the resource‐based perspective – as applied within entrepreneurship research. Building on in‐depth interviews of respondents from Norwegian farm households, three types of entrepreneurs were identified: the pluriactive farmer, the resource exploiting entrepreneur and the portfolio entrepreneur. These entrepreneurial types differed in regard to their basic motivation and objectives for start‐up, the source of their business ideas, the basis of competitive position and the connectivity between the new business and the farm, as well as in several other ways.