Economic impacts, household vulnerability, and behavioral determinants of Banana Bunchy Top Disease management among smallholders in Kigoma Region, Tanzania

Abstract Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD) causes near-complete production failure in affected crops, yet household-level economic consequences and behavioral determinants of management adoption remain poorly quantified in African contexts. This study addresses that gap through cross-sectional survey of 121 smallholder banana farmers in Kigoma region, Tanzania, applying Two-Stage Weighted Regression; propensity score matching (PSM) combined with weighted regression) to quantify economic impacts and Multinomial Logit Regression to analyze adoption of BBTD control measures. Two key findings emerge. First, BBTD inflicts catastrophic income losses (TZS 1.3 million annually, equivalent to 90% of baseline household income), with poorest-quartile farmers facing near-zero post-BBTD incomes and elevated poverty-trap risk; welfare losses exceed income losses when nutritional downgrading, school withdrawal, and debt from informal borrowing are accounted for. Findings are robust to non-parametric Wilcoxon tests and PSM diagnostics. Second, disease management reveals a collective action failure: 63.6% of farmers practice roguing (a private-benefit control measure), but only 9% adopt clean planting materials (a positive-externality prevention measure), a gap driven by behavioral barriers (loss aversion, information asymmetry, and time-inconsistency) beyond simple lack of awareness. Female farmers adopt management practices at 2 to 3 times the rate of male farmers, and adoption is further predicted by farm income, household labor availability, and extension contact. Together, these findings suggest BBTD is less a technical failure than an economic and behavioral one, its persistence sustained by limited access to clean planting material and underinvested extension systems, both remediable through targeted public support for the households least able to absorb the shock.