Psychological Factors Influencing Farmers’ Intention to Adopt Agroforestry: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

The biophysical characteristics of the farm and farmers’ socioeconomic factors have been used to explain adoption of technologies in Africa. However, agricultural technology adoption requires that we also understand the psychological factors that can encourage or discourage farmer adoption of technologies. The aim of this article is to assess the psychological drivers of farmers’ intentions to adopt agroforestry technologies on their farms. We obtained data from 400 smallholder farmers in the Mt. Elgon region of Uganda. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used as the main framework. Quantitative data were analyzed using structural equation modeling to assess the impact of a set of psychological factors on farmers’ intention to integrate trees in coffee.