RURAL COMMUNITY’S PARTICIPATION RATE AND PERCEIVED BENEFITS IN A RURAL AREA IN SAUDI ARABIA

The study aimed to investigate farmers’ participation, perceived benefits from local extension activities, and identified barriers to participation, A Simple Random Sampling technique was used for data collection. A personal interview was conducted, and 219 responses were usable for research analysis. The results showed that more than a half of the respondents (63.5%) have not participated in any agricultural extension activity. However, 36.5% of the respondents reported that they have participated in at least one agricultural extension activity. Regarding non-agriculture activities, only 11.9% of the respondents have not participated in any local activity, most of them (88.1%) participated in at least one local activity. Participation and perceived benefits from agricultural extension had negative significant relationships with “Low direct financial returns form activities”, “Uncertainty about the feasibility of local extension services”, “Not suitable for my schedule”, “The activities places are too far”, and with “Lack of confidence in the agricultural extension agents”. Participation and perceived benefits from non-agricultural activities had negative significant relationships with “No advertisement for activities”, “Not suitable for my schedule”, “Difficult to reach locations of the activities” and with “The activities places are too far”.