Impact of social, institutional and ecological factors on land management practices in mountain watersheds of Nepal

This paper analyses factors influencing the adoption of land management practices in two mountain watersheds of Nepal based on information collected through a questionnaire survey of 300 households. Farmers in both watersheds have adopted several types of structural and biological land management practices to control land degradation. The stepwise multiple linear regression model ran using SPSS revealed 10 variables significantly influencing the adoption of land management technologies. The variables found significant are: extension service, caste affiliation of farmers, household agricultural labor force, landholdings with fluvents, dystrochrepts, and rhodustalfs soils, training on land management, schooling period of the household head, participation in joint land management activities, and landslide density in farmlands. The predicted R value of 0.62, R square of 0.37, and adjusted R square of 0.35 indicate moderate explanatory power of the model as a whole. However, the acceptance of the variables included in the model helps us to draw very useful policy conclusions for sustainable land management. All above mentioned variables have positive influence on the adoption of land management technologies, but remarkably, extension services were revealed as the strongest factor influencing the adoption of technologies. This indicates the positive influence of the extension service provided by the Phewatal Management Project and the need for provision of similar type extension service for farmers elsewhere in the hills of Nepal. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.