The Real Rural Influentials: Behavioural Dimensions of Perceived Leadership which Influence Rural People

Opinion leaders are influencing other people and often are enjoying a special response and respect. Especially in rural areas opinion leaders are held in high esteem by those who accept their opinions. However, usually is very difficult to identify them and even more difficult to explore the behavioural dimensions of their leadership. In this paper an attempt has been made to segment farmers in distinguishable clusters with similar traits according to the degree of their leadership ability. Besides, this paper aims a) to recognize the real rural «influentials», b) to determine their importance and role in rural communities and c) to explore their socio-economic characteristics insofar those affecting their leadership. For this reason a survey was employed in a large sample of 450 farmers in a typical rural region in northern Greece. Using Two-Step Cluster analysis and other multivariate statistical techniques the sample was stratified in five general distinct clusters according to the generalizations of the related theories. In particular, it was found that the majority of participants are «opinion laggards» or «farmers who consider themselves as opinion leaders although they really are not» while a smaller percentage are the «farmers who believe that they have only some leadership traits» and few of them are the real «opinion leaders» or «influentials». This segmentation is very important in offering the knowledge to apply specialized policies based on the particular characteristics of each cluster. Moreover, considering that the application of individualized policy is easier and less costly we can use this methodology as a guide of identification of the “opinion leaders”, so that they can be potentially used as “intermediates” of agricultural policies and as “tools” of influence over the rest of the farmers and mainly over the “opinion laggards”.