چکیده:
The agricultural context in the United States has undergone several structural changes during the past three decades, including an emphasis on the development of different enterprises using existing farm resources (Barbieri, Mahoney, & Butler, 2008; Nickerson, Black, & McCool, 2001). Diversifying a farm to include recreation and leisure activities for visitors, commonly labeled agritourism, is increasingly being adopted in the United States and is suggested to bring a myriad of economic as well as non-economic benefits to farmers, visitors and communities. In this sense, agritourism has been suggested to help family farms remain in business, preserve American agricultural heritage, maximize the productivity of farm resources through their recreational use, and even to improve the economic situation of local communities (Ilbery, 1991; Nickerson et al., 2001; Ollenburg & Buckley, 2007;Veeck, Che, & Veeck, 2006; Wilson, Thilmay, & Watson, 2006).