Farmers’ awareness of agri-environmental legislation in Saudi Arabia

Bader Alhafi Alotaibi, Hazem S. Kassem, Abdullah AL-Zaidi and Mohamad A. Alyafrsi

Land Use Policy, 2020, vol. 99, issue C

Abstract: It is essential for farmers to possess awareness regarding various aspects of the environment, but studies on the awareness of environmental protection legislation and its determinants among farmers are limited. Farmers’ level of awareness of agri-environmental legislation intended to protect the environment has been explored by testing the perceptions of Saudi farmers regarding various components of environmental protection legislation: knowledge of legislation, penalties for violations, and the adverse impact of non-compliance. The study was conducted in the Al Kharj governorate of the Riyadh region in central Saudi Arabia. After using systematic random sampling to select participants, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 312 farmers to collect data. Approximately 20 % of the respondents had high awareness of environmental legislation. Significant associations were found between knowledge of legislation and knowledge of penalties (χ2 = 54.7, P < 0.01), knowledge of legislation and knowledge of the adverse impact on the environment (χ2 = 107.6, P < 0.01), and knowledge of penalties and knowledge of the adverse impact on the environment (χ2 = 38.8, P < 0.01). “Knowledge of penalties” was the lowest-scoring component with respect to farming knowledge in all categories of legislation. Furthermore, farmers’ knowledge of pesticide legislation was the lowest among all fields. Higher levels of education among farmers improved their awareness of environmental protection legislation. From a policy-making perspective, it is essential to understand farmers’ level of awareness of existing agri-environmental legislation, as this can inform the design of extension messages to encourage compliance with legislation.

Keywords: Agri-environmental legislation; Farmer; Assessment; Awareness; Saudi Arabia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719307835
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:99:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719307835

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104902

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().