Abstract:
Bamboo is a crucial non-timber forest resource, having a ubiquitous purpose applied in any sectors & can be anything products and plays the greatest role on the economic, social and ecological aspects and considered as a key of alleviating poverty for it can be utilized at all level industry & it’s called as a poor man’s timber and a green-gold resource. The bamboo resource is highly available in Ethiopia but it’s underutilized. So the main objective of the study was to examine the determinants of bamboo processors’ utilization level. An explanatory research design was employed to examine the effects of processors' awareness level, market demand, financial capacity of processors, technological accesses, supporting market, and market linkage on the processors’ bamboo utilization level measured by bamboo product variety. The data was collected from bamboo processors via questioner held by trained data collectors from the entire bamboo processors found in Bahir dar city and Injibara town and it was analyzed using ordinal logistic regression via SPSS 20 software package. The study revealed and concluded that access to technology, supporting market, processors’ awareness level, and financial capacity was a statistically significant determinant and positively affect processors’ bamboo utilization level, but market demand and market linkage were not statistically significant determinant. The study recommended that the government at each level shall give policy-based support & higher attention, and skill-oriented training about processing and marketing activities of bamboo is essential, aggressive promotion of bamboo resource should be conducted and responsible agencies should prepare manuals, videos leaflets and other important material, also GOs and NGOs institution should recognize bamboo resource prospective of alleviating poverty, facilitate experience sharing program and a credit basis support for processors should have to be given. The future researcher should extend the current study by adding more variables on expanded targets using other models by considering the interaction effects of independent variables & redefining it, also they can conduct comparative studies among different bamboo processors in different regions found in Ethiopia.