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ness of an individual is related to locally perceive beneits, (Vodouhe
et al., 2010). Governmental factors are the membership of a social
group and technical help received from agricultural oficials. Stan-
dard of living plays an important role on individual decision making
behaviour, as poverty and unsustainable practices are closely associ-
ated particularly in developing countries where policy framework in
many cases fails to generate adequate result (Nguyen et al., 2010).

Theoretical framework

Under the theoretical framework of the problem, it is assumed
that there are ‹t’ numbers of choices available for clearing land for
cultivation, and improved crop production technology is one of
them. While making a choice, it is assumed that a farmer›s deci-
sion is guided by his/her utility maximisation behaviour. When the
expected utility of improved crop production is higher than the ex-
pected utility of alternative practices, farmers decide to adopt im-
proved crop production technology (Kishore et al, 2012). The utility
function, which ranks the preference of the ith farmer, is given as
follows:

Uti = βiFi(SEti; Gti;) + εti; t = 1 or 2 and i = 1 ; 2;…;N (1)

Where

t 1, if practicing improved crop production technology, or

t 2, if not practicing slash and burn agriculture,

U underlying utility function which ranks preferences of ith

farmer βi vector of coeficients,

SEti Socio - Economic factors,

Gti Governmental factors, and

εti error term.

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