Incentives Influencing Tree Planting in the Albertine Rift Region, Uganda

ABSTRACT

The study assessed the influence of incentives on tree planting by farmers in Kiryanga Sub-county, Kagadi district, Albertine Rift Region, Western Uganda. Key informant interviews, focus group discussions and household interviews were conducted to generate data on the influence of incentives on tree planting among both tree farmers and non-tree farmers. The $X^2$ test established associations between incentives and tree planting while a t-test was conducted to test for differences in characteristics of non-tree farmers and tree farmers. Results indicate that incentives are important in tree planting although some did not match farmers’ interests ($X^2$= 35.13, p < .05). The incentives that were significant were: provision of tree seedlings (84.6%) and cash payments (69.4%) while farm tours as an incentive did not match farmers’ interests. The success attributed to incentives mainly depended on land size, and tree species’ preferences by farmers. The study concluded that provision of tree seedlings and cash payment incentives should be promoted. It is therefore important that stakeholders adopt incentive-based tree planting.

KEYWORDS:

• Incentives
• tree planting
• tree farmers
• Albertine Rift

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my supervisors: Professor J.R.S Tabuti and Dr. Juliet Kiguli for supervising this work. I thank all study participants (respondents) for accepting to give me information and the Kiryanga Sub-County administration for permitting me to collect data from their area. This work was financially supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) through the Norwegian Program for Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development (NORHED) project (UGA-13/0019). Permission to conduct the project was provided by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (NS – 511).

Data repository statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available and have been uploaded in Dryad (http://www.datadryad.org/). The DOI is https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c2fqz6151. The link is https://datadryad.org/stash/share/S_qCid1pfCcn8cJL-js6tF1xxqnnFDCmxGbk9jCw2_0.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) through the Norwegian Program for Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development (NORHED) project (UGA-13/0019)