Rural Residents’ Participation Intention in Community Forestry-Challenge and Prospect of Community Forestry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The contribution of local communities has become widely recognized as a better alternative in forest management than the traditional command-based control approach. However, several years later of implementation, most programs were failed due to a lack of community participation, imposing an uncertain future for community forestry. This paper examines rural Sri Lankans’ participation intention in community forestry (CF) program by using the Probit regression model. Randomly selected 300 individuals representing both CF members and non-CF members were interviewed for the study. The study results indicate that rural residents’ intention in future CF program negatively correlated with the participation status (CF membership) of individuals. Accordingly, CF members show less participation intention in future CF program than non-CF members. Socio-economic variables such as education level (p < 0.01) and the occupation of head of the household (p < 0.05) and total household income (p < 0.01) have significant influences on individuals’ participation intention in CF. In addition, non-monetary benefits derived from CF and perception on the product regulation and conflict mitigation are also appeared to significantly and positively affect villagers’ intention. The findings also revealed the knowledge gap on the purpose of the CF program and CF policy design. Hence, require immediate attention to improve awareness. Moreover, failure to raise local people’s participation intention in CF may indicate inadequate or ineffective government policies. Therefore, the Department of Forest Conservation should take sound measures to ensure that community-based forest management policies are consistently implemented at different administrative levels across the country and its rightness should be evaluated strictly.