Social Economic Factors Affecting Consumption of Sweet Potato Products: An Empirical Approach

The objective of the study was to analyze factors affecting consumption of value added products of sweet potato. The study was conducted in Shinyanga rural and Mwanza urban. Using cross sectional design, the study employed individual interviews, focused group discussions; review of relevant practical documents and discussions in data collection from a total of 200 surveyed households. Data collected was summarized using Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) windows versions 18.0.Analyses of the factors hypothesized to influence the consumption of sweet potatoes was carried out using multiple regression analysis. The goodness of fit of the model which is high as measured using coefficients of determination (R2). The higher value of R2 suggests that variables included in the model explained about 73% of the variations in the dependent variable. The F –Value is significant, indicating that the explanatory variables were statistically significant in explaining variation in the dependent variable. Furthermore, Variation Inflation Factor confirms absence of serious collinearity problem. Similarly, Durbin Watson test confirms the absence of autocorrelation. Furthermore, the data revealed that the sizes of land owned and education level are highly statistically significant at (p < 0.01) and statistically significant (p < 0.05) respectively. Hence there is need for farmers to increase the land area for sweet potatoes production to medium scale. Regarding to sweet potato prices it was found to vary from one node to another. However, there are a number of challenges facing the development of the sweet potato industry in Tanzania. The chronic shortage of seed is the most important challenge that needs to be dealt with (33.1%). Others were lack of capital (26.8%) unpredicted weather and pests/insect attack were the most critical challenges facing the subsector. Keywords: Sweet potato, value added products, consumption, Michembe, Matobolw