Producers' evaluation of an enhanced weather information service for the cotton industry in Australia

The study is concerned with producers' evaluation of an enhanced weather information service called the Cottonfields Weather Service produced by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The service has been in existence since the 1992/93 production year. It provides, at some cost to producers, the latest weather information for their locality, which is more detailed than the information obtained from the basic public weather service provided free of charge through the mass media. Access to the service is through a phone facsimile machine. The study involved a sample survey of 108 members of the Namoi Cotton Co-operative, one of the largest cotton producing groups in Australia. Producers' assessment of the service was based on numerical scoring of key quality attributes of information for managerial decision making such as timeliness, ease of understanding, accuracy and overall usefulness. Results of the analysis indicated that about 51% of the members of the Co-operative have adopted the service. Users generally considered the service to be of high quality, useful and effective. There was little variation in producers' assessment of various information quality attributes of the service. The level of formal education appeared to be the significant socio-economic variable influencing the adoption of the service.