INFLUENCE OF TAX COMPLIANCE COST ON HOSTEL OWNERS’ COMPLIANCE TO RENTAL INCOME TAX IN LAIKIPIA WEST SUB COUNTY, KENYA

The Government of Kenya through the Finance Act 2015 introduced a simplified rental income tax. This is a monthly tax payable by a resident person for rental income earned from use or occupation of residential property. Upon the gazettement of the Income Tax (Residential Rental Income Tax) Regulations, 2016, the Kenya Revenue Authority embarked on an aggressive campaign to enlist landlords into the Monthly Rental Income Tax regime. However, the Economic Survey 2021 showed that the country’s revenue collecting agency KRA was not able to meet revenue targets as set by the National Treasury. Comparison of National Government Budget Estimates with Actual Out – turns for the fiscal years 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 showed that KRA missed the Budgeted Ordinary Revenue targets by Kshs.128.7 Billion and Kshs.90.1 Billion respectively. Property taxes including rental income tax are part of the ordinary revenue collected by the tax authority. The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of tax compliance cost on hostel owners’ compliance to the monthly rental income tax in Laikipia West Sub County. Quantitative data was collected using questionnaires. A census of the entire population of hostels was used to collect the required data. The collected data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study established that an increase in tax compliance cost discourages compliance behavior since taxpayers tend to evade the costs either by under-declaring their monthly rental incomes or not declaring any income at all. The study recommends that KRA should scale up the tax payer education and awareness programs to ensure that more landlords are trained on how to file their own returns without having to use tax agents who make the process costly leading to non-compliance.JEL: H25, H26  Article visualizations

Local Participation in Community Forest Associations: A Case Study of Sururu and Eburu Forests, Kenya

Participation of local communities in the management and utilization of state-owned forest resources has become widely recognized in contrast to centralised forms of forest governance. This paper examined the extent of inclusiveness and household participation in community forest associations (CFAs) adjacent to Sururu and Eburu forests in Kenya. The probit model was used to assess the socio-economic factors determining participation in the CFAs. The study established that gender (P<0.05), group membership (P<0.0001), ownership of tree nursery (P<0.0001), wealth status (P<0.0001), percentage share of wage income (P<0.05), and farm size allocated to trees (P<0.05) significantly influenced CFA participation. However, because of high opportunity participation costs some poor (68%) and rich (65%) households did not participate in CFA activities. Since households participated in CFAs to derive livelihood gains, unclear participation benefits offered little incentive to get involved. Thus participation in CFA activities remained low. Therefore, Kenya Forest Service should review participation guidelines to enable effective CFA input in decision making on forest issues. Keywords: Community; inclusiveness; household; participation; user groups; participatory forest managemen

Analysis of small ruminants’ pastoral management practices as risk factors of peste des petits ruminants (PPR) spread in Turkana District, Kenya

Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is an emerging viral disease spreading throughout Kenya and East Africa causing major losses in the small stock. This study is an attempt to evaluate small stock management practices in Turkana pastoral system, Kenya as predictors of PPR outbreaks. Information on the social practices and the occurrence of PPR outbreaks was obtained by participatory techniques. The small stock management practices, evaluated as factors, in a previous study were simultaneously analyzed with seasons and administrative divisions as the independent risk factors for the presence or absence of PPR outbreaks in 142 Adakars (villages) as the dependent variable. Analyses were carried out for the years 2009 and 2010 combined as one data set and considered as longitudinal repeated data. In the analyses, the presence or absence of PPR outbreaks was the dependent variable. Data were further analyzed separately disaggregated by season where the presence or absence of PPR outbreaks in a season was considered as the dependent variable. All analyses utilized multivariable logistical regression analyses. In the longitudinal analysis, season was the only significant factor associated with PPR outbreak. Disaggregating the data by season revealed that certain seasonal-specific livestock management activities increased the risk of reporting PPR outbreaks: (1) sharing water sources leading to social aggregation of young stock in one point (Factor 3) (odds ratio (OR) = 2.0) in season 2 (wet season) of 2009; (2) sick dams left to nurse their young kids/lambs (Factor 7) (OR=1.62) in the same season in 2010. The finding of diverse risk factors in the same seasons across years suggests temporal heterogeneity in the distribution and occurrence of the determinants of PPR in the Turkana ecosystem. The study discusses the implications of these findings on disease control

Organizational Customers’ Retention Strategies on Customer Satisfaction: Case of Equity Bank Thika Branch, Kenya

The study set to examine evaluate customers’ retention strategies on customer satisfaction in the banking sector in Kenya case of Equity bank Thika branch, Kenya. Despite their central role in the economy, banks are faced with intense competition as a result of many similar products offered in the market, fast changing technological advancements and demanding customers. These challenges have rendered most traditional forms of competitive advantage like cost management, technology, product features and robust marketing strategies ineffective. Due to this, most banks have resorted to customers’ retention. Specifically the study investigated how customers’ demographic factors (age, gender, income and level of formal education), service quality and corporate image affect customers’ retention in the banking industry in Kenya. Data for this study was collected from 100 customers of Equity bank, Thika branch who were selected through multistage sampling technique using a questionnaire. The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS. Data was analyzed using both the descriptive and analytical techniques. The study result found that the quality of services offered by the bank has a great effect on customers’ retention. However, customers’ demographic factors like age, gender, level of formal education and marital status had no influence on customers’ retention. Further, the study found that the bank stability, reliability and involvement in community work will influence customers’ retention. This study therefore recommended that banks should strive to ensure good quality service so that they ensure high customer retention. This can be achieved by improving their opening hours and closing hours, speed of service, and degree of responsiveness to enquires, time taken to get service and good communication with the bank staff. Further, banks should market themselves but in their marketing they should emphasize their uniqueness especially on their services and products offered. Key words: Customer retention, Quality Service and Corporate imag

Transdisciplinarity in transformative ocean governance research - reflections of early career researchers

This paper interrogates the concept of transdisciplinarity, both theoretically and practically, from a perspective of early career researchers (ECRs) in transformative ocean governance research. Aiming to advance research methodologies for future complex sustainability challenges, the paper seeks to illuminate some common uncertainties and challenges surrounding transdisciplinarity from a marine science perspective. Following a literature review on transdisciplinary research, workshops, and a series of surveys, we determine that transdisciplinarity appears to be a concept in search of definition, and that there is a need to explore transdisciplinarity specifically from an ocean research perspective. The paper discusses a number of challenges experienced by ECRs in conducting transdisciplinary research and provides recommendations for both ECRs wishing to undertake more equitable transdisciplinary research and for the UN Decade for Ocean Science to support ECRs in this endeavour (Figure 1). Based on our findings, we interrogate the role of non-academic collaborators in transdisciplinary research and argue that future transdisciplinarity will need to address power imbalances in existing research methods to achieve knowledge co-production, as opposed to knowledge integration

Transdisciplinarity in transformative ocean governance research—reflections of early career researchers

This paper interrogates the concept of transdisciplinarity, both theoretically and practically, from a perspective of early career researchers (ECRs) in transformative ocean governance research. Aiming to advance research methodologies for future complex sustainability challenges, the paper seeks to illuminate some common uncertainties and challenges surrounding transdisciplinarity from a marine science perspective. Following a literature review on transdisciplinary research, workshops, and a series of surveys, we determine that transdisciplinarity appears to be a concept in search of definition, and that there is a need to explore transdisciplinarity specifically from an ocean research perspective. The paper discusses a number of challenges experienced by ECRs in conducting transdisciplinary research and provides recommendations for both ECRs wishing to undertake more equitable transdisciplinary research and for the UN Decade for Ocean Science to support ECRs in this endeavour (Figure 1). Based on our findings, we interrogate the role of non-academic collaborators in transdisciplinary research and argue that future transdisciplinarity will need to address power imbalances in existing research methods to achieve knowledge co-production, as opposed to knowledge integration