Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

THE BEHAVIOR IN EFFORT OF HEALTHY FARMING OF SEAWEED FARMERS IN KUPANG DISTRICT

Moses Kopong Tokan

Abstract

A key factor in controlling ice-ice disease is seaweed farmer. This is because seaweed farmers are the cultivating perpetrators. Seaweed farmers have a sense that is very useful in human life, especially behavior in effort of healthy farming (BEHF). BEHF relating to the six cases, the behavior of the aquaculture location selection, seed selection, planting and behavior in the maintenance, behavior in applying the appropriate cultivation techniques and behaviors in maintaining the quality of the environment so as to reduce the invasion of ice-ice disease. The purpose of this study was to describe BEHF of seaweed farmers in Kupang district and determine the direct and indirect effect of knowledge about ice-ice disease, knowledge of cultivation, motivation of cultivation and negative attitude towards BEHF of seaweed farmers in Kupang district. The study is correlational consist of five variables, namely knowledge of ice-ice disease, knowledge of cultivation, cultivation motivation, attitude and BEHF. This study used 150 seaweed farmers as respondents who determined randomly. The collection of data on farmers’ knowledge seaweed using test instruments, observation sheet, FGD and questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Direct and indirect effect and jointly effect of the exogenous variables toward the endogenous variables were analyzed by path analysis. The results showed that the knowledge of ice-ice disease give a positive direct effect to the motivation and negative attitude with contributions of 67.57% and 16.56% respectively. Positive direct effect of the cultivation motivation toward the negative attitude and BEHF with the contribution of 26.94% and 16.73% respectively and positive direct effect of the negative attitudes towards BEHF with a contribution of 33.41%. The indirect effect of the ice-ice disease knowledge toward the negative attitude through the cultivation motivation with a contribution of 18.2%. The indirect effect of the ice-ice disease knowledge toward BEHF through the cultivation motivation with a contribution of 11.3% and an indirect influence of the ice-ice disease knowledge toward BEHF through the motivation cultivation and negative attitude toward the ice-ice disease with a contribution of 6.08%.