摘要：Rainwater harvesting is increasingly seen as a strategy for enhancing agricultural productivity and boosting farm income in many drought prone areas. While extensive efforts are going on in constructing and providing smallholder farmers with water harvesting structures, such as ponds in Rwanda, there is limited knowledge of the factors that influence adoption of such structures and their impact on households’ input use and farm income. This study applied propensity score matching technique to assess the impact of rainwater harvesting ponds on farm income of small scale farmers in Rwanda. The study also assesses the factors that influence adoption of rainwater harvesting ponds by using a binary logit model. Results show that households with rainwater harvesting ponds are significantly better off in terms of achieving higher income than those without ponds, even though they are comparable in essential household characteristics. The study finds that household size, physical and financial asset endowments, group membership are significant in explaining the household decision to adopt rainwater harvesting ponds. It discusses the implications of these findings for policy.
关键词：Rainwater harvesting ponds;impact assessment;Propensity Score Matching;adopters (smallholder farmers in Rwanda)
