Structural equation modelling of perception for sustainable agriculture as climate change mitigation strategy in Ghana

Abstract

Background Ghana’s agriculture sector has contributed significantly to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the past decades even though there has been persistent decline of about 12.8% in the last 7 years. It decreased from 31.8% in 2009 to merely 19% as of September 2015, a period of 7 years. In spite of these trends, sustainable agriculture has been observed to be a game changer in agricultural development and growth globally. Sustainable agriculture is partly dependent on the attitude of the present agriculture students who represent the potential officers to impart sustainable agriculture knowledge to farmers. It is therefore relevant to assess the perception of students toward the concept of sustainable agriculture on climate change to inform policy decisions and interventions. Methods To assess the perception of students’ toward sustainable agriculture, this study sampled 120 final year undergraduate students’ in the School of Agriculture at the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon. The study used a well-structured questionnaire to solicit students’ perception for sustainable agriculture, its’ adoption barriers and perceived strategies to address the barriers in Ghana. Results Findings indicated that students’ perception for sustainable agriculture is positive. Majority of the students (78.00%) were of the view that sustainable agricultural practices would help protect the environment and our natural resources, therefore could mitigate adverse effects of climate change on agricultural activities. Conclusions Students ranked perceived barriers to sustainable agriculture adoption as; economic costs, lack of knowledge and land tenure constraints. Strategic ways to address the barriers were identified as farmer-to-farmer education, provision of financial incentives, developing training and partnership programs, and participatory learning.

A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Relationship between Digital Technology Use and Agricultural Productivity in EU Countries

“…Previous studies [3,4,[80][81][82] have demonstrated that SEM is a powerful and flexible method for analyzing the complex relationships among multiple and diverse variables affecting the agricultural sector. SEM allows researchers to model intricate interactions among observed and unobserved variables, making it well suited for testing and validating complex theoretical models, as emphasized by Garson [79] and Hair et al [78].…”

Restructuring State Intervention Strategies towards Chickpea Production Development in India—Application of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

“…To satisfy the discriminant validity of the model, the correlation of any two items between the latent variables should be less than the square root of the AVE value that was shared by its items within that latent variable [16,19]. Both the MSV and ASV of the exogenous variables are less than the AVE, and this indicates that there are no discriminant concerns to develop the model [33][34][35][36][37][38]. Table 8 satisfies the discriminant validity (implying multicollinearity is absent), as the correlations of any two items between the latent variables is found to be less than the square root of AVE values within that latent variable.…”

“…The structural model presenting the estimated coefficients of the exogenous variables to the latent endogenous variable (Figure 3) forms the basis for hypothesis testing [7,30,35,38,46]. The computed standardized total effects (Table 11) showed that strengthening SS is the most effective indicator influencing CPD among the ID construct.…”

Sustainability Performance of Indonesian Duck Farming and the Related Determinants

“…Yu et al ( 2021) established an association between socioeconomic factors and soil erosion, and Chandra and Kumar (2021) examined the relationship between vaccine use and economic performance. Ankamah et al (2021) explained the perception of agricultural sustainability in regard to mitigating climate change in Ghana. The results of Ankamah et al (2021) show that social features and resource information influence the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.…”

“…Ankamah et al (2021) explained the perception of agricultural sustainability in regard to mitigating climate change in Ghana. The results of Ankamah et al (2021) show that social features and resource information influence the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. This study uses SEM to construct a model for duck farming sustainability in Indonesia.…”