Abstract

The focus of this study is to examine the factors that enhance participation in wood craft enterprises, as well as estimating the return (profit) to such enterprises in Oyo State. A total of one hundred and fifty (150) copies of well structured questionnaires were administered in three Local Government Areas of Oyo States (Iseyin, Ibarapa Central and Akinyele Local Government Areas) with 50 copies of such questionnaires distributed in each Local Government which cut across various wood craft entrepreneurs in the study area. Descriptive, Logit and budgetary analysis were employed to know the determinants of wood craft enterprises participation and returns in the study area. Above 70% of the respondents were married but with low education, with 80% of them having primary school education and below. Around 60% of them have more than 7 years of experience and they depend more on family labour (55.3%). Mostly, they source capital by personal means with about 90% having less than 50, 000 capital base. The wood craft entrepreneurs on the average would realize a total revenue of N102, 340 per month. The total variable cost and the total fixed cost were 38, 692 and N10, 000 respectively, the economic efficiency for the enterprises was 1.10 which implies that for every N1 spent by the wood craft entrepreneurs in the study area on wood craft production, 10 kobo was realized as profit. It is evident that wood craft enterprises is going into extinction as the participants have crossed the working age limit, who are more semi-illiterate, if not completely illiterate.

Key words: Wood craft, entrepreneur, income, forest.