Abstract:
The area and ecosystem services of Kakamega forest have declined in the last 30 years. This has led to a shift of focus by households living around the forest fi'om getting goods and services to participating in agroforestry activities. With the support of NGOs agroforestiy is an altemative to provide goods and services hitherto provided by the forest. However the participation of households in the NGO-supported agroforestry programmes has not been expanding and what motivates households’ to participate is not known. There is also no adequate information on the benefits accruing to local communities participating in these programmes. This study therefore assessed fiictors that influence households’ participation in NGO-supported agroforestry activities and the economic benefits that accrued to them. Multistage sampling was applied in selecting a sample of 122 households that were interviewed for this study. The Heckman two- stage estimation procedure was employed, first to determine factors that influence households’ probability of participation in NGO-supported agroforestry and second to estimate factors influencing the extent of participation. Direct pricing method was used to estimate the economic benefits accrued by households participating in NGO-supported agroforestry activities. The results indicate that gender, education and off~fam1 income significantly and positively influenced participation of households’ in NGO-supported agroforestry activities while age and distance to the market were significant with negative effects. For the extent of households’ panicipation in NGO-supported agroforestry activities gender and education were found to be significant with positive effects. The study further found out that there were economic benefits that accrued as a result of participating in NGO-supported agroforestry. Results reveal that each household accrued over Kenya shillings 29,000 worth of benefits from participating in NGO- supported agroforestry and related activities. This study therefore recommends that government and other stakeholders fomiulate and implement policies geared towards training and knowledge dissemination; creation of off-farm employment opportunities and; technologies that target women, all which are aimed at promoting participation and increasing the extent of participation of agroforestiy and related activities.
