Abstract:
Previous studies on technology adoption have treated smallholder farmers’ decisions as being
binary. In this article, we assess the adoption, non-adoption and dis-adoptions decisions among
smallholder finger millet producers in Nakuru, Kenya. The crop has potential to enhance food
security and nutrition in the context of climate change. Data for the study were collected from a
household survey of 326 households selected through a multi-stage sampling process. Descriptive
and logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the data. The study findings reveal that
knowledge levels were higher among the adopters (81.4%), compared to the dis-adopters (45.6%)
and non-adopters (58.2%). While attitudes towards finger millet production were generally
negative, a large proportion of adopters had positive attitudes towards the economic value of the
crop and its contribution to human health. Regression results show that higher levels of knowledge
were positively associated with finger millet adoption. As expected, positive attitudes had a
positive influence on adoption while concurrently negatively influencing dis-adoption. Further the
results suggest that changing attitudes on economic value and the role finger millet plays on
human health could improve adoption decisions. The other factors that had a positive influence
on adoption were education, income, farming experience, while gender (being female), education
(higher), and income had negative influence on dis-adoption. Overall, our results suggest the
importance of psychosocial factors (knowledge and attitude), the importance of finger millet to
female household heads and resource endowment factors (such as education and income) in
sustaining adoption decisions while concurrently dissuading dis-adoption.
Keywords: adoption, dis-adoption, non-adoption, attitude, knowledge
