Decision making pattern of subsistence farmers in Bulgaria

Economic research by and large is dominated by a ‘rationality’ paradigm. Economic decision making within this paradigm is viewed as a maximising procedure. In general the latter represents the decision-making as a choice amongst a well defined set of alternatives. In this paper we question this and analyse the options of the small-scale subsistence farmers in Bulgaria in the way they see them. By applying mental accounting methodology we deduce some significant characteristics of Bulgarian subsistence agriculture.