Socio-economic determinants of home gardening practices among households in University Of Nigeria community: Heckman double stage selection approach

The study identified different food crops, fruits and vegetables found around homes, constraints of home garden practice, and also socio-economic factors influencing home garden contribution to household’s food consumption. Primary data were collected for the study. Two-stage random sampling procedure was used to select80 respondents for the study. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and Heckman sample selection model. The result shows that different food crops, fruits and vegetables that are majorly planted by most respondents include maize (82.5%), mango (50.0%) and fluted pumpkin leaf (81.2%) which are used for different purposes such as food, medicine and ornaments. The result from the Heckman two-stage analysis shows that in the first stage marital status (-1.7912) and female household size (0.3748) are statistically significant at 1% probability level, while income (4.6e-06) was statistically significant at 5% probability level on the home gardening practice. In the second stage, experience in home gardening (1.1089) was statistically significant at 1% probability level on contributions of home gardening to household’s food consumption. The study revealed that home garden practices was constrained by factors such as high cost of inputs, inadequate access to water, pest and diseases etc. The government and concerned agencies such as NGOs should provide and subsidize these promptly to households as incentives to increase their home garden practices. The study recommends there should be institutionalization of those socioeconomic factors that promote home gardening practice. Key words: home-gardening, food consumption, Heckman-mode