Entrepreneurship Behavior of Indigenous Fish Farmers in Eastern Chitwan, Nepal

Abstract

Aquaculture has great potential in the Terai region of Nepal due to the suitability of pond resources and government attempts to improve the fisheries sector. The majority of fish farmers in Chitwan belong to indigenous nationalities. Entrepreneurship skills help in uplifting local rural communities but due to the lack of attractiveness and economic production of fish in Chitwan, there is a higher chance of fish enterprise failure. Hence, an immediate need of assessing entrepreneurial behavior was felt and the study was carried out among indigenous fish farmers of Eastern Chitwan. For data collection, a questionnaire survey was conducted among eighty random respondents and a key informant interview was performed with expert farmers and fish scientists using the convergent parallel mixed method. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 22 and MS Excel. The entrepreneurial behavioral index (EBI) was calculated for each respondent, and it was assessed with various sociological and production factors. Average EBI was found among respondents. Most of the surveyed entrepreneurs have a low level of innovativeness, farming knowledge, and leadership while a medium level of motivation and decision‐making ability. From the t‐test, it was found that factors like AKC (Agriculture Knowledge Centre) visit, farming type, and organizational membership are significant but farmers’ gender, extension consultation, training, information source, education, and experience are nonsignificant with respondents’ entrepreneurship. Farmers who do commercial farming, visit AKC, and are members of social organizations have relatively more entrepreneurial behavioral indexes than other farmers. For the improvement of fish enterprises in the study area, training related to fisheries innovativeness, fish farming knowledge, and leadership is recommended through the collaboration of AKC and social organizations.