Intention to practice agriculture among urban dwellers in the Klang Valley Malaysia

Urban agriculture gained popularity among the urban dwellers since the issues of food security and the migration of people from the rural to the urban areas cropped up and caused the food demand to increase drastically. As a result of urbanization, most of the lands available for farming are now being converted into housing units, industries as well as for the construction of highways. In addition, there is an increase in the trend of rural migration to urban areas for employment opportunities and social amenities. Since the concept and campaigns about urban agriculture are quite new in Malaysia, the objective of this study is to determine the urban dwellers’ intention towards practicing agriculture among the strata households in selected areas around Klang Valley. Stratified systematic random sampling technique was used to select the respondents who live in strata housing estate. Face to face interview was carried out using structured questionnaire among 305 respondents. Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and binary logistic were applied to analyze the data. The majority of the respondents (69%) were female and Malays (83%) were the highest among the races. Most of the respondents were married and have a household size between 4 to 6 people. In term of income distribution, most of the respondents earn less than RM3,000.00 and majority of them work in the private sector. Factor analysis generated four (4) latent factors that describe respondents’ intention towards practicing urban agriculture. The factors are the ease in practicing urban agriculture, positive perception, the influence of the social environment and role model. These factors accounted for 67.45% of the variance in explaining the intention of the urban dwellers towards practicing urban agriculture. The binary logistic analysis model was used to obtain the coefficients applied to the calculations of the marginal effects and probabilities. The results indicated that age, gender, educational level, and household size significantly influence the urban dwellers’ intention towards practicing urban agriculture. The study revealed that urban dwellers intention towards urban agricultural practices is highly shaped by the ease in practicing urban agriculture, positive perception towards urban agriculture, the influence of role model and the social environment. The findings from the study showed significant associations between urban dwellers’ socio-demographic profiles and intention to practice urban agriculture. As a conclusion, urban dweller’s intention towards urban agricultural practices is greatly shaped by positive perception, ease in practicing urban agriculture, the influence of role model, and social environment such as family and friends, government, public figure, and environmentalist will play an important role in creating positive perception towards practicing urban agriculture among the urban dwellers. Furthermore, socio demographic factors such as age and education level will also influence the urban dwellers to involve in this kind of activity. Therefore, urban agriculture has the potential to be implement in Malaysia and the policy makers should consider introducing a good policies to make this activity being accepted by urban residents.

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