Abstract:
This research examined the socio-economic characteristics and profitability of fish marketing
participants in the selected fish markets in Lagos and Ogun States. Both descriptive statistics
and econometric tools were employed to analyse data collected with structured questionnaire that
was administered to 327 respondents in the study area. The significant socioeconomic variables
identified are sex, age, household size, access to credit, experience and education. The result of
the multiple regression analysis showed that R-square was found to be 0.658 which implies that
65.8percent of the variation in the socioeconomic characteristics affecting the profitability of fish
marketing was explained by the independent variables. The result also revealed that the
coefficient of fish marketing experience was positively related to profitability at 1% level of
significance. This implies that the more the years of experience of the respondent in fish
marketing, the more profit they will realize. The coefficient of household size negatively affected
the output of fish marketers at 10% level of significance. This implies that the higher the
population of the fish marketers’ household size, the lower the profitability of fish marketing.
This is because members of the household did eat from the sales stock. The study also revealed
that the coefficient of the respondents’ access to credit is positively related to fish profitability at
5% level of significance. This implies that the more the marketers have access to credit, the
higher the sales stock with variety of fish. The study showed that high cost of fish, inaccessibility
to credit facilities and shortage of supply are most critical constraints facing fish sellers in the
study area. The authors suggested that logistics to make cooperative societies to provide
adequate credit support to the members should be developed. Individual fish sellers should
belong to as many cooperative societies as possible. Government should make fish marketing
more attractive to enable more women and youth engage in the business to reduce youth
unemployment rate. Locally production of fishes should be encouraged to bridge the supply gap. |
