Determinants of finger millet adoption, non-adoption and dis-adoption among smallholder farmers in Nakuru, Kenya

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