Influence of Socio‑Technological Factors on Smallholder Farmers’ Choices of Agroforestry Technologies in the Eastern Highlands of Uganda
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Small-scale Forestry
Abstract
remedy
to counter declining farm productivity. Over the last decades, researchers and
other actors have promoted several agroforestry technologies to improve farm productivity.
Sometimes, the promotion message provided through extension assumes
a homogenous smallholder farmers’ context. However, smallholder farmers’ social
and farm contexts are heterogeneous. Smallholder farmers make different choices
of which technologies fit their contexts. A range of factor categories influence and
(re)shape choice decisions of smallholder farmers. In this paper, the authors seek
to articulate the importance of socio-technological factors shaping smallholder
farmers’ choices of specific agroforestry technologies on their farms. Knowledge
of these factors provides insights that inform the design of refined farmer contextbased
extension messages, consequently enhancing the scaling-up of agroforestry
technologies. The Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour was used as the main
framework to understand smallholder farmers’ choice decisions among agroforestry
technologies. We used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data were collected
from 277 randomly selected farming households in the eastern highlands of
Uganda. Qualitative data that complemented the quantitative were collected using
focus group discussions. An alternative-specific conditional logit model was used to
model smallholder farmers’ agroforestry choices. Results indicated that the number
of tree species desired by the farmer and the perceived value of the technology were
the most critical factors that commonly influence smallholder farmers’ choice of
agroforestry technologies. The influence of other factors such as gender, the number
of training sessions attended, total land owned, peer influence and perceived behavioural
control were technology-specific, suggesting the need to tailor agroforestry
interventions to specific farmer categories.
Description
Keywords
Choice decisions, Farm productivity, Conditional logit, Focus groups, Decomposed theory
Citation
Kalanzi, F., Kyazze, F. B., Isubikalu, P., Kiyingi, I., Orikiriza, L. J. B., Okia, C., & Guuroh, R. T. (2021). Influence of socio-technological factors on smallholder farmers’ choices of agroforestry technologies in the eastern highlands of Uganda. Small-scale Forestry, 20, 605-626.