Fatores comportamentais na comercialização de soja por agricultores do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Rio Grande do Sul plays a significant role in the Brazilian soybean market, ranking fourth in production volume. However, severe drought events, such as the one that occurred in the 2021/2022 crop season, have harmed the performance of the state's soybean chain, significantly reducing average productivity. The challenge of drought events, combined with rising production costs, has presented producers with a scenario of great challenges when it comes to marketing soybeans. Currently, several authors discuss soybean marketing based on a traditional model that compares the marketing performance of farms against an ideal scenario, assuming that producers make rational decisions. Since the 1950s, an important movement has emerged to discuss decision-making regarding financial activities from the perspective of behavioral characteristics. Behavioral finance gained traction in academic discussions in the following decades, consolidating itself as a field of research that operates under the convergence of diverse areas of knowledge such as psychology, economics, and finance.Scientific production in behavioral finance has focused on evaluating the performance of investors and financial market managers, gaining robustness in interpreting decision-making in this area, in contrast to analyzes of marketing dynamics in agriculture. This study proposes to analyze the application of behavioral finance theory to the analysis of decision-making by soybean producers in Rio Grande do Sul regarding marketing. It uses an exploratory approach and quantitative analysis of data collected through questionnaires applied to soybean producers in the state to identify relationships between behavioral factors and the decision-making process of these producers for marketing their soybeans