ASSESSINING AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICE IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT: A SERVICE QUALITY APPROACH

Abstract

The present study conducted a comprehensive investigation for assessing agricultural extension service from the perspective of farmers’ satisfaction. Hierarchical regression model was used to analyse farmers’ satisfaction. This study aimed to examine the level of farmers’ satisfaction with agricultural extension service and identify determinant factors for farmers’ satisfaction through Service Quality approach. In this study, five socio-economic characteristics (age, education level, farm size, annual income, extension media contact) of the farmers were considered for farmers’ condition investigation. Age of the respondents ranged from 38 to 66 years, an average of 53.18, the education score of the respondents ranged from 0 to 10, the average being 2.94, farm size varied from 0.51 to 3 ha, the average being 1.24 ha, annual family income of the farmers ranged from BDT 300 to 1600 thousand, the average be being 669.97 thousand, the experiential extension contacts scores of farmers ranged from 10 to 18 against the possible range from 0 to 40, the average being 14.18. In order to measure the service quality of extension workers, the SERVQUAL model was used using all of its five (5) dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) where reliability and assurance have the highest score 4.80 and mean 4.56, 4.49, 4.51, respectively. The distribution of farmers satisfaction according to their response presents that 35 percent farmers were very satisfied; 30 percent farmers were satisfied and 22.5 percent farmers were moderately satisfied with service quality while the least farmers were in somewhat satisfied category only 12.5 percent. From hierarchical regressions, it was found that implication SERVQUAL dimensions had significant contribution (61.8%) on their expression towards the extension service, whereas measurement of farmers’ satisfaction without using SERVQUAL model shows the level of satisfaction was 30.9 percent trends to the use of SERVQUAL model for the measurement of farmers’ satisfaction disclose more accurate result. The findings of this research will be useful to those are concerned with planning, implementation and evaluation of agricultural rural development programs.