Principal component analysis of factors influencing livelihood transformation among Flue-Cured Virginia tobacco farmers in Andhra Pradesh

This study aimed to identify the underlying perceived significant dimensions of factors linked with livelihood transformation among Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco farmers in the Northern Light Soil (NLS) region of Andhra Pradesh. Understanding these latent factors is essential for designing integrated interventions that enhance livelihood resilience. A multistage sampling technique was employed to select 210 FCV tobacco farmers from five auction floors covering 35 villages in the NLS region of Andhra Pradesh. Principal component analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 16.0 to identify the underlying factor structure. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure (0.87) and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity (χ² = 4293.0, p < 0.001) confirmed the suitability of the data for factor analysis. Five principal components with eigenvalues greater than one were extracted, accounting for 79.51% of the total variance. The extracted dimensions were crop choice, financial and risk, institutional and governance, market and price and technology and innovation. Crop choice drivers explained the highest proportion of rotated variance (16.41 %), followed by financial and risk (16.12%), institutional & governance (15.98 %), market & price (15.71 %) and technology and innovation (15.26 %). Institutional credit (F₁) (loading = 0.91), profitability (C₁) (0.90), extension services (I₂) (0.90), better price realization (M₃) (0.88) and field demonstrations (T₄) (0.88) emerged as the strongest indicators. The findings, provide empirical evidence for policymakers, extension agencies and development organisations to formulate integrated livelihood enhancement strategies. This study offers a comprehensive empirical assessment of the perceived factors linked with livelihood transformation among FCV tobacco farmers using PCA.