Adoption of appropriate technologies among smallholder farmers in Kenya

Abstract

The adoption of appropriate technologies in small-scale farming is an important response to the effects of climate change and variability, especially in Africa. This study investigates the levels of awareness and adoption of some appropriate technologies at two pairs of sites matched for rainfall, but differing in temperature, in semi-arid and sub-humid regions of Kenya. The pairs were also subsequently matched to form cool and warm regions. The study used participatory methods consisting of 20 focusgroup discussions and data from 722 randomly sampled households from the two regions. The descriptive and inferential results show that there was a high level of awareness of appropriate technologies but low rates of adoption in all regions. Even though gender did not influence awareness of the technologies, it had a positive correlation with adoption of the technologies. There was a difference in adoption of between male-headed households and female-headed households at a 1% level of significance. Technology knowledge and use were higher in the semi-arid and warm regions than in the subhumid and cool regions, with farmer-to-farmer learning being the most prominent source of information. There was a difference in the use of technologies which have a positive impact in regions with high temperatures at a 1% level of significance. A higher percentage of farmers used water harvesting, reduced tillage, crop rotation, green manure and used mulches in the warm regions compared to cool regions. The trend in awareness and adoption assumed a gender and an ecological dimension in favour of males, in both semi-arid regions and warm regions.

Acceptance Factors of Appropriate Technology: Case of Water Purification Systems in Binh Dinh, Vietnam

“…More recent research accounts for the end-user's perspectives toward AT, although these studies appear to be limited [20,31,32]. Compared to the aforementioned research, these studies attempt to determine key factors by interviewing AT users, and discover that they differ from those considered important by planners and activists.…”

“…Furthermore, they suggest that the first step to achieving sustainability goals involves identifying factors considered important by the end-users who recognize and adopt AT. For example, Kalungu and Filho [31] investigated smallholder farmers in Kenya to understand the differences in AT awareness and adoption across four sites, each with typical environmental conditions. The authors used data from household interviews and focus-group discussions to demonstrate that gender played a role in AT adoption, and knowledge transfers among farmers were the primary method to gain information.…”

“…As it is important to analyze end-users' perspectives in sustainability-related AT activities, using the TAM will provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting behavioral intention and actual technology usage. Moreover, AT is typically employed in non-organizational contexts and includes non-information technology [20,31,32], which is why the UTAUT model is more adequate than the TAM in analyzing AT acceptance factors. A successful AT also requires facilitating conditions such as infrastructure and knowledge transfer mechanisms [4,9,31].…”

“…Several researchers have emphasized education's role in AT's sustainability [2,4,9,12,30,54]. While external organizational support is undoubtedly necessary in the initial stages, users must gain sufficient knowledge to use and maintain systems in the long term [9,24,31].…”

Assessing the Impact of Environmental Regulation on Livestock Manure Waste Recycling: Empirical Evidence from Households in China

“…In addition, drawing on related research by Kalungu et al [41] and Pratt et al [42], the household heads' characteristics (such as sex, age, and education level), family characteristics (such as number of laborers and cultivated area), operating characteristics (such as breeding income proportion, breeding period, and breeding scale), and environmental conditions (such as distance between pen and livestock department) were selected as control variables. The assignment of variables and descriptive statistics are shown in Table 1.…”