Assessing the farmers’ perception towards precision water application devices under the PMKSY scheme: a TAM-based structural equation modelling approach

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), which is initiated by the Government of India, is aimed at improving the irrigation and water-management structures to increase the efficiency of crop production by maximizing the utilisation of water. The current study aims to explore the attitude of the farmers towards precision water-application gadgets and the subsequent propensity to utilize such devices under the PMKSY program. The study has included beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the programme but has given specific attention to micro-irrigation devices. The sample comprised 3,134 farmers spread across seven different agro-climatic regions in Tamil Nadu and thus was representative in breadth. The structural-equation modelling on the basis of the technology-adoption paradigm was used to test the hypothesis based on SmartPLS software to perform a partial least squares path analysis. Findings have shown that the attitudes and perceived utility of farmers are the two main factors that influence micro-irrigation adoption; perceived ease of use has an indirect effect on the decision through these mediators but does not have a direct effect. Multi-group analysis also indicates that there are salient differences between beneficiary and non-beneficiary farmers. Among PMKSY beneficiaries, the pathways of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and behavioural intention are stable, resulting in actual adoption. Conversely, in the non-beneficiaries, the choice to adopt is only weakly related with intention but rather affected more by the visibility and observational signals rather than the experience of learning. Such findings correspond with the available research on the adoption of agricultural technology. Therefore, the study promotes farmers’ behavioural intention to micro-irrigation, which is complemented by the perceived usefulness and ease of use at once, as a successful approach to increase the level of adoption.