Assessing the downstream socioeconomic impacts of agroforestry in Kenya
研究评估了瑞典非政府组织在肯尼亚西部推广农林业九年的效果，发现该项目对农户的农林业收入、薪柴获取和奶牛产奶量有适度但统计显著的正向影响，并小幅增加了家庭资产，尤其对女性户主家庭效果更明显。
Agroforestry is widely purported to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, rehabilitate degraded landscapes, and enhance the provisioning of ecosystem services. Yet, evidence supporting these longer-term impacts is limited. Using a quasi-experimental impact evaluation design informed by a theory-based and mixed methods framework, we investigated selected intermediate and final outcomes of a nine-year effort led by Vi Agroforestry, a Swedish non-governmental organization (NGO), to promote agroforestry in large sections of Bungoma and Kakamega counties in western Kenya. We compared households belonging to 432 pre-existing farmer groups operating in 60 program villages and 61 matched comparison villages. To address potential self-selection bias, we used program targeting as an instrument for program participation, combined with the difference-in-differences approach to control for time-invariant differences between our treatment and comparison groups. We complemented the above with semi-structured interviews with a sub-sample of 40 purposively selected program participants. Despite evidence of variable program exposure and agroforestry uptake, we found modest, yet statistically significant, effects of Vi Agroforestry’s program on intermediate outcomes, such as agroforestry product income, fuelwood access, and milk yields among dairy farmers. We also found that this program modestly increased asset holdings, particularly among households represented by female program participants.