Factors Determining the Willingness to Adopt Grasscutter Domestication Technology among Urban Dwellers in Southwest, Nigeria

This study investigated factors determining the willingness to adopt grasscutter domestication technology in South west, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 160 respondents from 9 urban towns in Oyo, Ogun and Osun States. Well-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Data was analysed using descriptive analysis, correlational analysis and t-test. Results showed that the majority (69.4%) of the respondents were male and married. Coefficient correlation (r value) at (p< 0.05), shows that there is a significant association between respondents’ educational status, religion, household size, primary as well as secondary education with respondents’ willingness to adopt the technology. There was also found significant relationship between, perceived health status of those who are into the grasscutter technology, perceived nutritional value and economic value of the grasscutter domestication technology with the willingness to adopt the grasscutter domestication technology. The result if the T-test revealed that there is significant relationship between perceived ease of practice and willingness to adopt the technology. The majority of the respondents are willing to rear grasscutter if variables like space, fund, availability of ready-made buyer and feed, breeding stock and training are put into place. However, issues relating to having enough plots of land, funding, ready-made buyer of grasscutter, and training facilities are most germane. It is therefore recommended that funding and training on the adoption of the grasscutter domestication technology should be made available to individuals. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v24i11.13 Copyright: Copyright © 2020 Banjo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCL), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Dates: Received: 20 September 2020; Revised: 29 October 2020; Accepted: 10 November 2020

Globally, wildlife has great potentials for meat production and serves as an important source of the highly desired animal protein for both urban and rural communities (Adedapo and Aekunle, 2014). The importance of animal protein in human nutrition cannot be over emphasized (Owen, Alawa, Wekhe, Isirimah, Chukuigwe and Aniebo, 2009;Owen and Amakiri, 2009). Lack of protein has been implicated as the major factor that inhibited the physical and mental growth of millions of children in Africa for generations (West Africa trends, 2014), because in recent times, there had been significant short fall between the production and supply of animal protein to feed the ever increasing population (Akinola et al., 2015). However, with ever increasing human population and obvious protein shortage in Nigeria, West Africa, there is the need for an exploration of other means to provide readily acceptable meat on short term basis. According to an FAO Document Repository on Wildlife utilization and food security in Africa, there is no doubt at all that domestication and farming of favourite "wild animal species" could provide viable complementary or alternative sources of animal protein. However, the key to its acceptance on a wide scale depends on the development of technical know-how and cheap methods of production (http://www.fao.org/docrep).
To arrest this unacceptable trend, efforts had been directed towards boosting the micro livestock sector. Among the microlivestock species is the Grasscutter or cane rat, which is a heavily built animal with round muzzle, small round ears, short tail and harsh bristly fur. Apart from being the most preferred, it is the most expensive bush meat in most West African countries, Southwest, Nigeria inclusive (Olatidoye et al.,2018). It contributes to both local and foreign earnings in some of these countries. Most rural populations in Nigeria depend on bush meat for their dietary protein supply and most Chinese who are resident in Nigeria cherish Grasscutter meat as regular meal and forms delicacy for entertainment for their guest from abroad (Olukole, et al., 2010) As earlier highlighted, wildlife domestication has been recognized as the best way of achieving this objective (Ajayi, 2010). Studies conducted by Akinola et al. (2015) and Olatidoye et al. (2018) revealed that Grasscutter production in Southwest, Nigeria, is mainly at subsistence level and output is relatively low despite its relatively competitive prices in both local and international market. It is therefore important to consider factors intrinsic and extrinsic that determines the urban dwellers willingness to adopt the grasscutter domestication technology. However, the willingness to adopt the technology is pivotal to the adoption of such technology. Barriers to technology adoption include, personal characteristics of individuals, a lack of awareness, access, skills and experience (Hargittai, 2002) insufficient training (Cotten, Yost, Berkowsky, Winstead and Anderson, 2016;Czaja and Sharit, 2013), decreased confidence in ability to use technology (Czaja et al., 2006: Siren andKnudsen, 2017). However, these barriers do not fully explain why individuals in the urban areas of Southwest, Nigeria may be less willing to adopt the technology, other factors, such as perceptions regarding economic and nutritional value and ease of practice and health status should be considered. The knowledge of these factors and their interrelationships can provide important information towards the development of strategies to promote greater technology adoption by urbanites which could in turn result in improvements in quality of life. It is against the background, this study explored the influence of personal characteristics of individuals, perceived economic and nutritional value, and perceived ease of rearing of the grasscutter and health status of the individual as they determine the willingness to adopt the grasscutter domestication technology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the factors determining the willingness to adopt grasscutter domestication among urban dwellersin southwest Nigeria.

MATERIALS AND METHOD
Study area: The study was carried out in South west, Nigeria. It comprised of six states, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos states. The area lies between longitude 2.0 3 1 and 6 0 00 1East and latitude 6 0 2 1 and 8 0 37 1 N with a total area of 77, 818km2. National Population Commission (2007) reported that 27 511 892 people lived in Southwest Nigeria. Agriculture is one of the major source of income for greater number of people in the States providing food and shelter, employment, raw materials and remains an important source of internally generated revenue in the states. The climate is tropical with distinct wet and dry season with temperature ranging between 22-380C which favors the growth of food crops like yam, cassava, millet, maize, fruits, vegetables, plantains, cocoa and tobacco. Livestock like ruminant, poultry, fish and forest animals like grasscutter which also can be found in thick forest riverine areas are also found in the State. The state has two vegetation zones which are derived savannah and forest zones.
Sample/Data Collection: Multi-stage sampling procedure was used for the study. At stage one, random selection of 3 states (Oyo, Ogun, Osun) was done. At stage two, eight urban settlements were purposively selected from the three states (Ibadan, Ogbomosho and Eruwa from Oyo state, Abeokuta and Ijebu-ode from Ogun state, Oshogbo, Ife and Ilesha from Osun state). At stage three 20 urban dwellers were selected from each of the urban settlements to make a total of one hundred and sixty (160) respondents.
Well-structured questionnaire was used to determine respondents' socio-economic characteristics, perceived economic and nutritional value, perceived effect of the grasscutter domestication technology on their health status, perceived ease of practice as they all affect respondents' willingness to adopt the grasscutter domestication technology in the study area as the dependent variable.
Sample/Data Analysis: The data collected were analysed through descriptive survey, (percentage tables, chats and frequency tables) while inferential statistics, such as the coefficient correlation, Pearson rank correlation and T-test were used to draw inferences between the variables in the hypotheses.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
According to table 1, 69.4% of the respondents are males while the remaining 30.6% are females. 45.6% have tertiary education while just 3.1% have no formal education. Majority (73.1%) are married, 26.4% are less than 30 years and also between 31-40 years, while the least percentage (5%) of respondents are 60 years and above. 60% are Christians, 35.6% are Muslims while 4.4% practice Traditional religion. 33.3% of the respondents' household size is 1-5, 25.6% has 6-8, 24.4% has 12-14, 14.4% has 9-11 while 1.9% has more than 15 household size. 55.1% of the respondents has farming as their primary occupation, while the least percentage of respondents (1.3%) are retirees. 47.5% of the respondents work with private firms as secondary occupation, while just 2.5% are sole proprietors. Majority of the respondents (69%) are resident in their personal homes while just 31.0% are living in rented apartments. Table 2 displayed the response of respondents to 13 perception statements on the economic value of the cane rat. Statement 9 'Grasscutter has longer gestation period than other rodents' ranked first with the highest mean of 2.75, followed by statement 3' There is a high risk of epidemics among grasscutters with a mean of 2.67 and statement 13 'All together rearing grasscutter is very expensive 'ranked 3 rd with a mean of 2.65, while statement 6' Domesticated grasscutter does not grow well as compared to the one in the wild' ranked lowest with a mean of 1.81. According to this result, 'the grasscutter has longer gestation period than other rodents' (x= 2.75) and 'all together rearing grasscutter is very expensive' (x= 2.65) had the highest mean value above 2.30 the grand mean value The implication is that most respondents see the following perception statements 'the longer gestation of cane rat',' its high risk of epidemic' and 'its expensive cost of rearing' as major deterrents to its ability to give high economic yield.   Table 3 exposed the response of respondents to 5 perception statements on the nutritive value of the cane rat. Statement 2' Domesticated grasscutter has lower nutritional benefits compared to the one in the wild' ranked 1 st with a mean of 2.76, statement 1 'Domesticated grasscutter is not as nutritious as compared to the one in the wild' ranked 2 nd with a mean of 2.50, statement 5' Grasscutter meat does not have any medicinal value' ranked 3 rd with 2.30, followed by statement 3 'Grasscutter is not nutritious' with 2.25 while statement 4 'Grasscutter has higher protein content compared to other animals' ranked 5 th with a mean of 1.99. According to this result, only the following perception statements 'domesticated grasscutter is not as nutritious as compared to the one in the wild' (x = 2.76) and 'grasscutter meat does not have any medicinal value' (x =2.50) had mean value above 2.36, the grand mean value. The implication is that many respondents perceive statement 2, 1 and 5 as reasons they do not perceive the domesticated cane rat meat as nutritious. Table 4 displayed the response of respondents to 7 perception statements on the effect of the cane rat technology on human health conditions. Statement 7' Humans consuming grasscutter meat are liable to catching various diseases' ranked 1 st , followed by statement 6 ' The odour emanating from grasscutter habitat is quite offensive' with a mean of 2.56, then statement 5 ' There is risk of attack from domesticated grasscutters on humans' with 2.51, statement 1' The odour emanating from the grass cutters' habitat gives me allergy' with a mean score of 2.49, then statement 4 'Grasscutter meat is bad for hypertensive patients' ranked 5 th with 2.47, followed by statement 2 'There is a high risk of grasscutter spreading contagious diseases to humans' ranking 6 th with 2.44 and lastly statement 3 'Grasscutter meat is bad for diabetic patients' ranking 7 th with 2.13. According to this result, the following perception statements 'the human consuming grasscutter meat are liable to catching various diseases' (x = 2.62) 'the odour emanating from grasscutter habitat is quite expensive' (x =2.56) and there is risk of attack from domesticated grasscutters on humans (x = 2.51) had the highest mean value above 2.46, the grand mean value The implication from this result is that the response is divergent, however statement 7, 6, 5 accounted for the major implications of cane rat technology on the health status of humans according to the respondents.    Table 5 revealed the response of respondents to 3 perception statements that bother on the ease of practice of grasscutter technology. Statement 1 'It is not so convenient to rear grasscutter' 2 'Grasscutter cannot be reared with other animals' and 3 'Grasscutter farming is not easy to practice' ranked 1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd respectively with mean scores of 3.23, 3.22 and 1.84 respectively. According to this result, the following perception statements, 'the grasscutter is not convenient to rear' (x = 2.62) and 'the grasscutter cannot be reared with the other animals (x = 2.62) had mean value above 2.76, the grand mean value. The result implies that statements 1 and 2 are statements perceived by respondents as the main deterrents to willingness to practice. Table 6 presented the results of the response to the variables related with the willingness to adopt the grasscutter technology. The response revealed that the willingness to adopt is high with the highest as 93.1% to statement 4 'Assuming you have enough plot of land, will you be willing to rear grasscutter' and the lowest 79.4% to statement 8 'If you were given a breeding stock of grasscutter, will you be willing to rear them'. This implies that majority of the respondents are willing to rear grasscutter if variables like space, fund, availability of ready-made buyer and breeding stock and grasscutter feed, training are put into place. This result of this finding is in tandem with the study of Pantanali (1987) and Annor and Kushi (2008) that reported that fund and availability of a ready-made buyer were found to influence adoption. Hypotheses Testing: 1. There is no significant relationship between personal characteristics of respondents and willingness to adopt Table 7 presented the result of the correlation between the personal features of the respondents and their willingness to adopt the grasscutter technology. The result revealed that educational status (r=-0.221; p=0.005), religion (r=0.244; p=0.002), household size (r=0.343; p=0.000) and both primary (r=0.270; p=0.001) and secondary (r=-0.302; p=0.000) occupation were significant at 0.05 level of significance. However, household and secondary occupations were the most significant. This result is against the findings of Okanlawon, Adeleke and Eniola, 2019 in which age was found to be significant in the adoption of the technology of grasscutter domestication. It also negates the findings of Ijeomah et al., (2016) in which educational status, household size and farming technology were found to be not significant on the willingness to adopt the grasscutter technology. However, Ijeomah, et al. (2016) supports the findings of this study in which age was found to be non-significant. The finding supported the result of Annor and Kushi (2008) which revealed that education influences adoption of grasscutter technology.
2. There is no significant relationship between perceived nutrition value and willingness to adopt 3) Are you willing to rear grasscutter 83 (51.9) 77 (48.1) Assuming you have access to fund, will you be willing to rear grasscutter 147 (91.9) 13 (8.1) Assuming you have enough plot of land, will you be willing to rear grasscutter 149 (93.1) 11 (6.9) If you have a ready-made buyer, will you be willing to rear grasscutter 147 (91.9) 13 (8.1) If you have a ready-made supplier of grasscutter feed, will you be willing to rear them 147 (91.9) 13 (8.1) If you were given training on grasscutter rearing, will you be willing to rear grasscutter 147 (91.9) 13 (8.1) If you were given a breeding stock of grasscutter, will you be willing to rear them 127 (79.4) 33 (20.6) If you were living in your own personal house, will you be willing to rear grasscutter 135 (84.4) 25(15.6) Source: Extracted from field survey (2020).  (2020). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.   (2020); ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.  (2020).** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.  The result presented on table 11 revealed the relationship between respondents' perceived ease of practice and their willingness to adopt the grasscutter technology. The result revealed that the relationship was significant i.e. the perceived ease of rearing of grasscutter by respondents would influence their willingness to adopt the technology. The dependent variable in the hypothesis i.e. perceived ease of rearing was tested against willingness to adopt using T-test. Result shown in Table 11.0 showed that perceived ease of rearing was significantly related to willingness to adopt (t=-1.703; p=0.000; t=-2.9; p=0.003). This is in agreement with the findings of Yeboah 2009 which stated that the waning support could be attributed mainly to challenges of appropriate housing and feeding for the domestic grasscutter production, relatively large initial capital investment required, the lack of readily available breeding stock, and problems of feed during the dry season and the many unresolved and poorly understood issues associated with diseases in captive grasscutters, making it difficult to domesticate. 6. There is no significant relationship between residential apartment and willingness to adopt Table 12 revealed the correlation between the residential area of respondents and their willingness to adopt the grasscutter technology. The result revealed