Livestock Show Attendees' Attitudes About Agriculture at the Great Yorkshire Show

Abstract

Society is distanced from agriculture. Therefore, consumers and producers lack opportunities to have firsthand interactions and experiences with each other. Lack of firsthand experiences, which are important to attitude development, creates confusion for consumers and affects their buying and voting decisions. Fairs, however, provide unique opportunities for consumers to experience agriculture up-close and in-person. Although fairs in the United States include agricultural elements, those in the U.K. like the Great Yorkshire Show (GYS) more heavily promote and feature them on their showgrounds. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to determine if attending a U.K. livestock show changed attendees’ attitudes about agriculture and to compare attendees’ attitudes to those of California State Fair (CSF).

The population consisted of GYS attendees at the livestock show on July 12 and 13, 2017. This study used mixed methods with quantitative and qualitative components. The instrument used in the quantitative component included a then and now semantic differential table with bipolar adjective pairs to measure attendees’ attitudes about agriculture before and after the experience. Qualitative interviews were conducted using photo elicitation to learn about how attendees developed attitudes about agriculture prior to attending the GYS. Results indicated that GYS attendees had positive attitudes about agriculture before they attended the Show and had more positive attitudes after they attended the Show. Attendees had more positive before and after attitudes than CSF fairgoers. Further research is needed to better understand how GYS attendees developed such positive attitudes about agriculture prior to attending the Show and what elements of the GYS experience were most influential to attendees’ positive attitude development.