From Peers to AI: Advice and Trust in Rural Nature‑based Entrepreneurship

The project examines how entrepreneurs in the nature based businesses evaluate advice from human sources and generative AI (GenAI), and what conditions are required for such advice to be perceived as reasonable and actionable.

Young female farmer standing in a big field where beans grows. She is holding a phone in one hand and an ipad in the other hand. She looks happy.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of the project is to strengthen advisory services in nature-based businesses by developing a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurs evaluate advice from different sources and how such advice can be designed to be perceived as credible, relevant, and actionable in their everyday decision-making. The objective is to contribute to more precise and cost-effective advisory systems that can benefit a broad range of entrepreneurs, in line with the ambition of Familjen Kamprads stiftelse to support practically applicable and widely disseminable knowledge.

To achieve this purpose, the project is guided by the following four research questions:

RQ1: How do entrepreneurs in nature-based businesses perceive advice from different sources (e.g., peer networks, formal advisors, and GenAI tools), and how do these perceptions influence which advice is followed in practice?

RQ2: Under what conditions is advice generated by GenAI perceived as credible and relevant, and when does it instead give rise to distrust or perceptions of insufficient local embeddedness?

RQ3: How does the relationship between the advice provided and the entrepreneur’s own judgment (e.g., confirmation or contradiction) influence the willingness to act on the advice?

RQ4: How can actionable guidelines and tested prototypes be developed so that both human and GenAI-based advisory support effectively integrate tacit knowledge, local experience, and everyday decision-making contexts in nature-based businesses?