management and interpretation in thisway allowed for the original
electronic transcripts to be readily available, which facilitated
a constant appreciation of context even after coding and data
reduction had been performed. Also, the analysis process enabled
the authors to create, retrieve and compare both codes and data
segments within and across the collated interviews. This helped
with theory building through the development and refinement of
emergent concepts. Thus, MaxQDA was employed particularly for
the dissection and comparison of data segments according to the
creation and indexing of thematic codes relating to emergent
issues. These included the codes; ‘primary identity as farmer’,
‘primary identity as entrepreneur’, ‘tourism attraction integrated
with farm’ and ‘tourism attraction more separate from farm’. All
these data categories emerged from initial analyses, data familiarisation,
embeddedness and immersion in the field. Importantly, the
analysis employed allowed for a grounded understanding of the
nature of the actors engaged in diversified farm-tourism businesses.
A vital component of the research involved the use of the
actors’ own definitions and views as categories by which the data
were coded and interpreted, ensuring that the findings are necessarily
context-driven and reliable.
Subsequent refinement through conceptual interrogation of the
data through the lens of experiential authenticity and the inductive
recursive approach allowed for further layers of deeper theoretical
extraction from the interviews and the development of a model of
experiential authenticity and the farm-tourism attraction. This was
informed by, but also moved beyond, the previous coding process
to a higher interpretive level of theorisation, as discussed next. The
findings presented in this paper also use selected excerpts from
interview transcripts in order to support arguments. These are
anonymous to ensure confidentiality.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Views on choices and dilemmas and the experiential
authenticity of farm-based tourism
A precursor to discussing views about the choices and dilemmas
involved in the experiential authenticity of farm tourism is to
understand the degree of enthusiasm which farmers feel for
diversification. From the present research, it is evident that
economic pressure is the main reason that initially instigated
recognition of the need to diversify among the farmers. This was
the dominant motivation cited by all participants. They recounted
feelings of anxiety and a sense of desperation which resulted in the
decision to adopt a diversification strategy. This is exemplified by
the following interview excerpts:
‘We had a big overdraft. The bank wouldn’t lend us any more
money, so we had to do something different. In fact, one bank
foreclosed on us.’
‘we are a dairy farm.we dropped down to about 13p a litre at
one point, and it needs to be about 18, 19 to break even, and it’s
about 18 and a half now. So we’re only at break-even point at the
moment and they keep trying to push a bit more to screw more
out of the dairies.’
Other reasons were also cited in addition. These relate to issues
of lifestyle choice and desire to inform others about their views on
conservation and the characteristics and values of the countryside.
Lifestyle was particularly important for those who worked on
a farm and had been part of a ‘farm family’ for generations. Such
a ‘way of life’ is viewed as an attachment to the land and rural life
rather than denoting any ‘softer’ connotations, such as an easier
pace of life, work alleviation or lack of business growth orientation/
acumen (Tregear, 2005). These characteristics are excluded from
their definitions of preferred lifestyle, which involves links to the
land and notions of rurality, whether this takes the form of farming
or other activities. For instance, the following excerpt illustrates the
importance of maintaining farming alongside the other activities in
which they were involved, tourism and conservation, with overriding
importance being attributed to family farming as a vocation
and way of life:
‘. we combined our farming, the tourism and the conservation.
that’s why we’ve kept the farm going because the
whole idea was to keep the farm going if we could, as a family
farm.’
Imparting to others a greater awareness and knowledge about
their farming lifestyle, as well as of the wider countryside was
expressed by participants in their roles as ‘educators’, ‘custodians’
or ‘wardens’. Indeed, this was a major theme raised inductively by
the participants, and emerged as significant in terms of how they
characterised the importance of what they do. This is exemplified in
the following interview excerpts;
‘The first year we opened, this one little kid jumped off the bus
and he’d never been in a field. and I said “what do you mean
you’ve never been in a field?” He was an eight year old and it
was the only time he’d ever been out of Hull and he didn’t know
what a field was. they’ve no idea about animals. They have no
idea the size of pigs. They’ve seen pictures of pigs, they know
what a pig looks like, but when they go down and see the pigs,
they stand back and stare. It’s sad, but it’s the way it is’
‘. I mean the majority of people that come here are all
townspeople. They don’t really understand animals. They like to
see them and they like to touch them, but there’s nothing nicer
for a kiddie out of the town to touch them.We have some sheep
and lambs and a calf and things like that. They love to just put
their hands in and of course the calf licks their hand, and they
love it.’
‘. Most things in the countryside [involve] looking after the
countryside. My dad used to say that we’re only custodians. We
only look after this bit of land that we have, and somebody else
is going to have it later on. So you look after it and hopefully try
to leave it in a better state than when you took it over.’
For those driven to diversify largely because of economic
motivations, and who harbour the aim of maintaining their traditional
farming activities, decisions to move into tourismare difficult
to make and there was resentment of the need for change. It is
argued that those families who identity themselves primarily as
farmers as opposed to managers of tourism enterprises, were more
likely to make comments which appeared somewhat resentful of
the tourist presence and that farming had declined to such a point
as to necessitate such a choice.
‘People don’t understand this is the part time job, we have got
the full time job to do after they leave’.
‘It would be nice to live on a farm that was just a farm, probably,
wouldn’t it, but needs must, I think’.
Such participants characterised themselves primarily as farmers
rather than tourism business owners (Burton & Wilson, 2006;
Haugen & Vik, 2008). There was a feeling of resentment among
such farmers at having to pursue an alternative strategy characterised
in some cases as ‘alien’ in order to increase financial revenue
generated by the farm. This is an interesting extension of the
findings by Haugen and Vik (2008) that traditional farmers are
more satisfied with farming income than farm-based entrepreneurs.
Taken together, this would suggest that farmers are willing