Household Tree Planting in Tigrai, Northern Ethiopia: Tree Species, Purposes, and Determinants

Abstract

Trees have multiple purposes in rural Ethiopia, providing significant economic and ecological benefits. Planting trees supplies rural households with wood products for their own consumption, as well for sale, and decreases soil degradation. In this paper, we used cross-sectional household-level data to analyze the determinants of household tree planting and explored the most important tree attributes or purpose(s) that enhance the propensity to plant trees. We set up a sample selection framework that simultaneously takes into account the two decisions of tree growers (whether or not to plant tree and how many) to analyze the determinants of tree planting. We used logistic regression to analyze the most important tree attributes contributing to households’ tree-planting decisions. We found that land size, age, gender, tenure security, education, exogenous income, and agro-ecology increased both the propensity to plant trees and the amount of tree planting, while increased livestock holding impacted both decisions negatively. Our findings also suggested that households consider a number of attributes in making decision to plant trees. These results can be used by policymakers to promote tree planting in the study area by strengthening tenure security and considering households’ selection of specific tree species for their attributes (criteria).