An Assessment of Quality of Service Extended by Select Agriclinics and Agribusiness Centres in Union Territory of Puducherry

S. Balasoundari, K. Mahendran, S. Moghana Lavanya and Patil Santosh Ganapati

Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology, 2021, vol. 39, issue 11

Abstract: The establishment of Agri clinics and Agribusiness Centers is a Government of India Scheme implemented through NABARD and MANAGE, Hyderabad for promotion of rural entrepreneurship through effective training and handholding of the graduate youth. Agri-Clinics are intended to provide expert advice and services to farmers on various aspects to improve crop/animal yield and increase farmers’ revenue. This study was conducted to assess the quality of services provided by the Agri clinics and agribusiness centers in the union territory of Puducherry. 90 farmers were personally interviewed using the service quality instrument - SERVQUAL to explore their expectation and perception of service quality provided by the Agri -clinics and agribusiness centers. The results indicated that the level of quality of the services provided by the Agri clinics is not to the expected level of the sample farmers i.e., all perception ratings were lower than their expectation scores. In all five dimensions of service quality, a gap was observed between farmers’ perceptions and expectations: Tangible: -0.93, Reliability: -0.89, Responsiveness: -0.78, Assurance: - 0.58, Empathy: -0.61. The results indicated that much more service improvement activities are needed for improving the service quality. The Agri-clinics need to modernize facilities and equipment to reduce the gap between farmers' perceptions and expectations.

Keywords: Agribusiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/358191/files/s ... 12021AJAEES76950.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:ajaees:358191

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology from Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().