Psychological mechanisms of willingness to participate in high-value markets: an eye-tracking experiment

Abstract

The high-value markets (HVMs) plays an important role in facilitating stable incomes and sustainable livelihoods for farmers. However, the existing analysis mostly focus on the external and environmental characteristics, ignoring the internal resource endowment of the information processing ability of farmers. Based on the cognitive resource, eye movement experiments were implemented to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying the willingness to participate in HVMs. Empirical results suggested that cognitive load increases individual’s preference for earlier consumption and further weakens willingness to participate in the HVMs. Combined with eye movement recorded by eye-tracking, the possible path that cognitive load indirectly affects time preference by distracting farmers' attention and weakening their self-control ability were excluded. This study provides new ideas for deepening the understanding of HVMs development and enhancing the level of vertical cooperation in production and marketing links.