Estimating Compliance Behavior in the Pesticides Regulation among Paddy Farmer
Norashikin Baharom1,Jamal Ali1,Fazli Shah Abd Aziz2
Citation : Norashikin Baharom,Jamal Ali,Fazli Shah Abd Aziz, Estimating Compliance Behavior in the Pesticides Regulation among Paddy Farmer International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education 2018, 5(4) : 60-66
The increase in population size and the pattern of food intake has led the requirement to increase food production at the same time. Rice is absolutely among the food that most of the world population eat. Farmers are constantly trying to increase production of rice in line with its ever-increasing demand and increased production will lead to an increase in farmers' income. Apart from fertilizers, other inputs often used by farmers are pesticides that can control insects and diseases. However, most of the applied pesticide get dispersed in the environment and affects the health of unprotected paddy farmers and sprayer workers. Exposure to pesticides is one of the most important risks among paddy farmers. Lack of information and proper training on pesticide use often reported playing a major role in occupational accidental among paddy farmers. The previous study found that some farmers use the banned pesticides and carry out improper occupational security standard for handling process of pesticide. This study trying to find factors that can influence the compliance behavior of pesticides regulation by paddy farmers in Northern Peninsular of Malaysia. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model has been selected to measure farmer compliance behavior on the pesticides regulation such as the types of consumed pesticides and procedure applying the pesticides. Results of the descriptive analysis show that socio-economic factors such as age, experience, level of education, farm size, farm status, training and relationship with agencies can influences compliance behavior. While, the estimated Logit Model indicates that factors such as intention, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control can also influence compliance behavior. The study has highlighted the need for proper training for paddy farmers on the handling of pesticides and undertaking awareness on dangers of pesticides to paddy farmers and young generations. The findings of this paper suggest that government and non-government agencies can play the important role to educate people about pesticide handling procedure need to be educated to farmers for more understanding of the pesticides regulations.