Quantifying the effects of sow-herd management information systems on farmers' decision making using experimental economics

A pilot experiment was conducted to yield insight into whether laboratory experiments can be used as an alternative to surveys for determining the profitability of management information systems (MIS) in sow farming. In total, eighty-six sow farmers, including fifty-one farmers from an earlier survey study, participated in an individual decision experiment, which was executed in a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control, pretest/posttest design. In a MIS group, MIS estimates were derived by within-subjects comparisons of decision quality with and without MIS features. A baseline group was included to control for learning or exhaustion effects during an experimental session. Subjects receiving MIS features significantly improved their decision making whereas subjects without MIS features did not. Correlation between MIS estimates of the survey study and MIS estimates of the experiments was not significant.