Abstract:
The present thirty-one percent of overall forest cover is not enough to conserve
biological diversity globally and so the need to conserve the last global forests
(Powlen et al., 2021). Kenya has experienced significant degradation of forest
resources in the last 40 years. In 2005, the government passed a forest
legislation that allows communities adjacent to forests to co-manage forests.
This paper evaluated the driving force of community involvement in
participatory forest management. The paper adopted a descriptive research
design targeting forest-adjacent communities. A questionnaire and interview
schedule were used for data collection. A pilot study was conducted, and
research tools were carefully revised to ensure the validity and reliability of
the content. The paper used Taro Yamane’s sampling formula to extract 255
respondents from a total of 671 households surrounding the forest.
Quantitative data were evaluated using inferential statistics. The results were
presented in tables and discussed appropriately. The results showed that
45.90% of the respondents are affiliated with one of the conservation user
groups, while 54.1% of respondents were not affiliated with any Kodera Forest
conservation groups. Based on Pearson’s chi-square test statistic (43.449 with
p-value = 0.000), it was clear that there was a significant association between
education level and perception of forest user group importance. Similarly, the
chi-square results suggested that there is a statistically significant association
between participation in conservation activities and respondents’ monthly
expenditure at the conventional level of significance (α = 0.05).
