## 3 Results  
The responses used for this empirical analysis are part of a survey implemented during October 2019 in the region of Thessaly which lies at the central part of Greece. For the sample formation, the authors conducted a series of visits to towns and villages of the region. Special focus was given to those with arable crops farms to complete the questionnaire, due to fact that they are the dominant crops of the region. Additionally, we considered essential to narrow down the scope of the survey only on arable crops farmers, in order to avoid extra heterogeneity that could be imposed on the data because of the potential different views and scopes of farmers with different types of farms. The sample was formulating following the stratified sampling approach, having as a reference point the number and the structural characteristics of the agricultural holdings of the region. According to the Greek Payment Authority of Common Agricultural Policy (C.A.P.) Aid Schemes (www.opekepe.gr) [40], in the region of Thessaly there are approximately 42,000 agricultural holdings, specialized on arable crops. Accepting as satisfactory the 95% confidence intervals, the minimum size for this sample is 321 holdings. A team member was present during the completion of the questionnaires and provided any necessary explanations that farmers might had. In total, 326 questionnaires were completed and are being used to test the explanatory framework of the paper. As for the dependent variable, 17% of the farmers have been engaged in a PRP in the previous five years while 83% have not. This figure confirms the rather low engagement of farmers in research activities. In addition, in Table 2 the descriptive statistics of the items to be used for the composition of farmers' willingness constructs are presented. As can be seen, the highest average score of farmers' agreement with the statements of each item of the perceived usefulness is found for the PU 1 item while the lowest for the PU 3. Thus, it is concluded that farmers understand the feasibility and usefulness of the PRP but are somehow reluctant when it comes to the funding of their participation. It should be noted that the PU 3 highlights also the highest variability among the items of the construct considering the mean and standard deviation values. In the second construct, the average values of the items follow a similar pattern with those of the first one, as the highest and lowest average values are very similar. The highest average score is found for the Trust 3 item, while the lowest for the Trust 2. It seems that farmers perceive universities as more trustworthy than the European Union as institutes. Finally, the two items of the _Motivation_ construct present average values that lie above the medium agreement score of 3. This result signifies that farmers are driven by motives of joy and self-fulfillment rather than a pure profit maximization objective when engaging in farming activities. In addition, the results of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation for the validation of the constructs of the farmers' willingness variables category are presented in Table 3. More precisely, Table 3 presents the loadings of the variables on the three factors, the Cronbach's Alpha value of the reliability test for each factor, the Eigen values and the variance explained by each factor, as well as the results of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and [PERSON]'s test of sphericity [41; 42]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline
**Item** & **Mean** & **Std. Deviation** \\ \hline PU 1 & 3.669 & 1.345 \\ \hline PU 2 & 3.355 & 1.246 \\ \hline PU 3 & 2.932 & 1.443 \\ \hline Trust 1 & 3.110 & 1.395 \\ \hline Trust 2 & 2.953 & 1.415 \\ \hline Trust 3 & 3.631 & 1.401 \\ \hline Mot 1 & 3.963 & 1.075 \\ \hline Mot 2 & 3.337 & 1.496 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: The descriptive statistics of the Farmers’ Willingness constructs’ items.