Towards a categorisation of behaviour determinants with a view to a more meaningful analysis, intervention and evaluation of adoption behaviour

This paper investigates the influence of some selected personal, environmental and intervening factors on the adoption behaviour and production efficiency of maize growers with the object of identifying the most important causes of behaviour and thus acquiring a better understanding of maize farmers' response to advice regarding maize production in the study area. A total of 200 farmers were randomly drawn form the two agro-ecological zones (lowland zone and intermediate zone) in the Shashemene district. This represents a sample of ten percent. In the analysis of data multiple regressions were employed to identify the most important determinants associated with behavioural change and to calculate their variance contribution. The results indicate that, in general, the intervening variables tend to have the highest prediction value. They were found to explain 87% of the variance of behaviour associated with the practice adoption and the resulting production efficiency, while the independent variables had R2 value of only 0.33 and 0.27 in the case of personal and environmental factors respectively. Amongst the intervening variables needs (need tension and need compatibility) were found to have the greatest effect on both of the dependent variables (p< 0.01) South African Journal of Agricultural Extension Vol.32 2003: 73-8