Effects of socio-economic household characteristics on traditional knowledge and usage of wild yams and medicinal plants in the Mahafaly region of south-western Madagascar

Table 5 Results of two step cluster and discriminant analysis of 250 interviewed rural households in the Mahafaly Region of SW-Madagascar

Selected variables	Cluster group		Discriminant analysis
	Well-off farmers	Less well-off farmers
	Mean ± SD	Mean ± SD*	Wilks’ Lambda	Sig	Structure coefficients
Education level	1.03 ± 0.71	0.86 ± 0.69	0.986	0.068	0.116
Agricultural harvest	1.23 ± 0.42	0.52 ± 0.63	0.747	0.000**	0.574
Households activities	1.11 ± 0.71	0.26 ± 0.44	0.928	0.000**	0.274
Family size	7.35 ± 3.55	6.4 ± 3.20	0.982	0.037*	0.133
Tropical livestock unit ¹⁾	12.53 ± 12.32	2.18 ± 5.40	0.746	0.000**	0.577
Agricultural area	2.86 ± 2.30	1.19 ± 1.60	0.945	0.000**	0.239
Medicinal plants used	27.77 ± 13.55	32.7 ± 14.30	0.974	0.011*	−0.162
Number of medicinal uses	13.87 ± 4.27	15.6 ± 3.60	0.976	0.016*	−0.153
Diversity of medicinal plant use	23.35 ± 2.12	25.92 ± 2.10	0.988	0.089	−0.108
Wild yam species collected	2.23 ± 2.71	3.17 ± 2.17	0.960	0.002**	−0.201
Yam tubers harvested per collection event ²⁾	6.72 ± 6.74	13.02 ± 10.33	0.908	0.000**	−0.314
Frequency of collection	2.35 ± 2.71	5.83 ± 5.23	0.886	0.000**	−0.354
Sale	3.95 ± 11.09	17.03 ± 24.12	0.920	0.000**	−0.291
Collection period	2.40 ± 2.29	13.78 ± 2.79	0.943	0.000**	−0.243
Use of wild yams	1.73 ± 0.44	1.49 ± 0.50	0.948	0.000**	0.231
			Eigen Value = 1.026
			Percentage variance = 50.41

¹⁾[38]²⁾Number of harvest holes per collection event, *significance level at p ≤ 0.05, **significance level at p ≤ 0.01.

ISSN: 1746-4269