Impact of Farmers’ Socio-economic Characteristics on Transport Modal Choice in Osun State

Abstract

Impact of socio-economic characteristics on farmers’ modal choice in Osun State was examined in this study. Furthermore, it examined impact of farmers’ socio-economic characteristics on their transport modal choice in the distribution of agricultural farm produce. Movement of farm produce from areas of low utility and value to areas of high utility has been a major source of concern for rural farmers due to the lack of rural road infrastructural facilities. The availability of rural road transport services and adequate infrastructure is nonetheless essential in order to facilitate effective distribution of agricultural produce. Purposive sampling method was used to select three hundred and eighty-five rural farmers from all the nine farm settlements in Osun State, while structured questionnaires were administered to the selected farmers to elicit appropriate information in relation to the study objective. While multiple regressions were adopted to examine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of the farmers on transport modal choice at 0.05 level of significance. Results revealed that the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers have significant effect on modal choice selection in the study area (R=0.840, F-statistics = 105.725, p<0.05) and the multiple regression model reveals 64.6% variation in the socio-economic factors influencing mode choice selection by the rural farmers. However, only five socio-economic characteristics are significant with beta values for sex (84.0%), level of education (54.0%), age of the farmers (40.6%), farmers’ income (19.5%) and family size (13.0%) while marital status is insignificant (3.4%.) at p<0.05. The study concludes that farmers’ socio-economic characteristics had significant impact on farmers’ modal choice selection. The study therefore recommends that government should improve on its maintenance culture of rural road facilities in the studied area.