Reform Land Use Patterns of People at Ruamthai Demonstration Cooperative Village, Kui Buri District, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province

Abstract

     Objectives of this research were to determine the socio-economic condition, opinion level and factors related to opinions on the reform land use pattern of the villagers of Ruamthai Demonstration Cooperative Village, Kui Buri District, Prachuap Khiri Khan province. A designed questionnaire was used as a tool for gathering the data by interviewing 260 respondents from Ruam Thai village (Mue 7), Pu Bon village (Mue 8) and Yan Sue village (Mue 9). The Chi-square was employed for testing the relationship between dependent and independent variables, and with the given significant level of .05, and a computer program was employed for the analysis. The results of the study indicated that most respondent was male and their average age was 42.84 years old. The mostly graduated on elementary education. The average number of household member was 4.21. Their marital status was marriage and stayed together with their couples. Agriculture was their main occupation. The average annual income and expenditure were 45,361.54 baht and 45,857.69 baht, respectively. They were migrated from the other areas. Their average duration of resettlement was 20.10 years. The average size of land holding was 8.15 rai. They wanted the additional cultivated land in average of 13.70 rai. They used the land for pine-apple and sugarcane cultivation. They had experience in forest resource conservation. Most of them had never attended any training courses, and according to their opinions on land use pattern was used for general purposes at the highest level, with the average score of 4.40 from the full score of 5. The factors relating to opinions on the reform land use pattern economic forest were size of land holding; public land uses were occupation and size of land holding, and general purposes of the villagers were income and duration of staying in the village.