Conceptual framework
Our conceptual framework explains how farmers choose CF to reduce uncertainty, and how different contract design attributes could varyingly affect their motivation to participate in CF. In order to understand smallholders’ motivation toward CF, we first proposed 12 contract design attributes that were adapted from Masakure and Henson (2005). Using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), they reported 11 attributes that varyingly influenced smallholders’ choice to participate in CF in the context of a high-value fresh produce exports. We used a choice-based research design, which requires respondents to choose among alternatives rather than to rank or rate them (Chang et al., 2012). A choice task that involves more than six attributes is not recommended (Green and Srinivasan, 1990), as this tends to confuse respondents (Sawtooth Software, 2008). Thus, we had to limit the contract design attributes to six. To do so, we carried out a pilot study among 20 seed potato farmers, 60% of them had experience in CF. The results were analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. AHP has been used in several applications of multi-criteria decision making (Ghodsypour and O’Brien, 1998), and evaluates a set of alternatives in a hierarchical structure.