Appraising the Influence of Mobile Climate Information Systems on Farmers’ Adaptive Capacity in Cross River State, Nigeria 1 0
Keywords:
Mobile Climate Information Systems, Farmers, Farmers’ Adaptive Capacity, Cross River StateAbstract
This research aims to appraise the influence of mobile climate information systems on farmers’ adaptive capacity in Ikom Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Purposive random sampling technique was used to select 400 farmers that constituted the sample. The instruments for data collection were Mobile Climate Information Systems Questionnaire (MCISQ) and Farmers’ Adaptive Capacity Questionnaire (FACQ). The reliability of the instrument was established using split-half method which yielded indices ranged from 0.75 and 0.89 respectively. Consequently, the instruments were found to be adequately reliable for use in the study. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyse the collected and prepared data for all the hypotheses; at 0.5 level of significance. The result revealed that there is significant influence of availability of mobile devices and farmers’ digital literacy to use mobile platforms on their adaptive capacity. It was recommended among others that Government and agricultural stakeholders should ensure adequate provision and affordability of mobile devices to farmers through subsidies, soft loans, and cooperative support schemes so as to improve farmers’ access to climate information and strengthen their adaptive capacity.
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