Consumption of poultry meat, eggs, and other animal-sourced commodities has dramatically risen by almost 86 %, with the demand of indigenous chicken products almost doubling over the past few decades. In Kenya, poultry farmers prefer indigenous chicken (IC) due to their resilience to harsh climatic conditions, high feed conversion rates, delicious end products, ability to scavenge and potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions among other factors. Despite the high demand for poultry and its products, the gap between demand and production remains high. Poultry farmers try to keep pace with the demand by integrating the recommended improved IC breeds into their production system. Although there exists some understanding on the determinants of the farmers to adopt improved IC, still there is scanty information on how socio-psychological factors influence the intention to adoption improved IC among the farmers in Kenya. Thus, this study sought to investigate the determinants of intention to adopt improved IC while specially focusing on the role of socio-psychological factors. A total of 374 IC farmers in Machakos county were selected using a multistage sampling technique. Partial Least Square - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the data. Results from descriptive statistics showed that approximately 90 % of IC farmers in the study area were aware of the improved indigenous chicken breeds. However, the adoption of the improved IC was below average (44.9 %). The path analysis results revealed that Subjective Norm (SN) was the main determinant of farmer's intention to adopt improved IC breeds, followed by Attitude (ATT) and Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC). The study recommends more emphasis to be given to psycho-social issues through well designed public and private interventions that will promote adoption of improved breeds among IC farmers.
Keywords: Adoption; Awareness; Improved indigenous chicken; Intention; Structural equation modelling.
© 2023 The Authors.