Motivations for sustaining urban farming participation

Abstract

Farming in urban areas is recognised as a sustainable approach towards the provision of food and has increased in Malaysia over recent years. Nonetheless, sustaining the people’s participation in urban farming is challenging. Despite numerous researches in the past on the types of motivations for urban farming participation, only a few of those researches have been on the motivations of urban farming participants in Malaysia. This paper reports on a research about the motivational factors for urban farming participation in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. A questionnaire survey was conducted, of which the respondents comprised 243 practitioners of urban farming in Selangor. The results revealed that physical and mental health and the environment were the motivations with the highest scores among urban farming practitioners. Further investigations are warranted to understand the influences of age, gender and race on urban farming motivations and to help sustain urban farming programs.