Abstract:
This study aimed at identifying the determinants of rainwater harvesting technology adoption for
irrigation and farmers practice in water harvesting against drought in Gursum district, Eastern
Hararghe zone. The specific objectives were assessing farmer's perception towards the
rainwater harvesting technology and determining the major factors affecting adoption of
rainwater harvesting technology by smallholder farmers in the study area. The data was
collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data for this study was
collected from 150 farmers through application of appropriate statistical procedures while
secondary data was gathered from various sources like zonal and district Bureau of Agriculture
and Rural Development, NGOs serving in the district and zonal water bureaus. This study has
used multi-stage sampling technique in which both purposive and random sampling techniques
were applied to select the required sampling units from the total population under study. Likert
Scale was employed to measure the perception of respondents towards RWH technology, and
binary logit model was used to analyze the factors that affect rainwater harvesting technology.
Both descriptive and econometric data analysis techniques were applied. Logistic regression
estimation revealed that farm experience of household head, education level, family size, labor
availability, distance to market, TTLU perception and external support have significantly
affected the RWH technology adoption decision of households in study area. The finding of this
study indicated that any effort in promoting and adopting of RWH practice should recognize the
socio-economic, technique, institutional, physical and psychological characteristics for better
adoption of RWH technology. Taking the specific characteristics of farmers into account in
introducing and promoting rainwater harvesting may help policymakers to come up with
projects that can win acceptance by farmers.
