Pesticide exposure reduction: Extending the theory of planned behavior to understand Iranian farmers' intention to apply personal protective equipment

It is undeniable that there is a challenge of extensive and indiscriminate application of chemical pesticides and their adverse impacts on human health and environment. This fact accentuates major role of using personal protective equipment (PPE) as an essential component of safety behavior in reducing these impacts. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge concerning drivers of farmers' behavior in using PPE during handling pesticides; particularly, in developing nations such as Iran. Hence, this research focused on narrowing the gap by application of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) of healthy extension including additional constructs of perceived susceptibility and severity in order to investigate the factors affecting Iranian farmers' intention in using PPE. The theory was empirically tested using a cross-sectional survey. The data was collected from 322 wheat farmers in Zanjan County, Northwest Iran. Empirical findings of a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis showed that primary TPB adequately fitted the data and explained 43% of intention variance of using PPE. Three primary TPB constructs were as following: attitude, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and subjective norms (SN); in which they all had positive impacts on intention. Most importantly, the results confirmed that extended TPB had the efficiency to determine drivers of farmers' intention in using PPE in which the inclusion of perceived susceptibility and perceived severity increased the explanatory ability of the model up to 10.6%. The findings of present study underlined the importance of the role of risk perceptions' constructs (i.e., perceived susceptibility and perceived severity) as antecedents of farmers' PPE behavior. These findings would be helpful for program planners and strategists to design and implement effective interventions through farmers' safety behavior plans respecting pesticides application particularly in developing countries.