Farmer's Perceptions on Agricultural Risks and their Determinants: The Case of Tea Production in Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam

Abstract

The study outlined the main sources of risk and the relationships between socio-economic variables and risk perception of the tea farmers in Vietnam. The data was collected from a survey in study area in July and August, 2016. After the survey, data of 326 sampled farmers were available for analysis in this study. Farmer's risk perception was firstly studied using principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of the data. Then, multiple linear regression was used to examine the relationship between farmer's risk perception and socio-economic variables. Our finding indicated that price volatility, pest and disease, increase of production cost were the most serious risks in tea farmers' perception as single risks. A number of socio-economic variables had significant impacts on risk perceptions. Notably, the agricultural education through extension programs was found to reduce worries and risk perception. Thus, policy intervention should be paid more attention on improving farmers' knowledge in agricultural production and tea production, especially in pest and disease prevention.