Using Theory of Planned Behaviour to explore oil palm smallholder planters intention to supply oil palm residues

Abstract

Smallholder planters manage almost 40% of Malaysia's oil palm plantations, indicating that their perception is significant to the success of biofuel produced from palm biomass. The success development of the second generation biofuel can be hampered due to lack of understanding on planter's motive to supply oil palm biomass, which in turn will lead to disruption in continuous supply of feedstock. This study was conducted to examine the smallholder planters' intention to supply oil palm residues available at their plantations. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is used in this study with three additional attitudinal belief variables, namely, perceived production benefit, perceived environmental benefit and perceived ecological impact. A total of 327 valid questionnaires were obtained via a face-to-face survey conducted at oil palm fresh fruit bunches collection centres. Structural equation modelling was conducted using smartPLS version 3.0 software. The results indicate that smallholder planters' intention can be predicted by attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, perceived production benefit and perceived environmental benefit. In advance, this study confirms that attitude and subjective norm can be determined by all three attitudinal beliefs whereas perceived environmental benefit has an insignificant influence on perceived behavioural control. Our result suggests that the policy makers and biofuel producers shall assure planters that their current harvest practice and income will be maintained as and at the level of business as usual when promoting their involvement in supplying oil palm biomass. A precautious step is needed to prevent additional fertilizer usage by planters to trade-off potential ecological impact (e.g. nutrient loss) caused by oil palm biomass removal from their plantation. As this study is conducted prior to an established palm based biomass market, the researcher may want to compare our result with the established market in the future.