Abstract

New approaches and tools are needed to enable land tenancy arrangements in the developing countries to specify the landlord-tenant relationship in general and particularly in the targeted study area Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. So this research work applied a multi-criteria decision making approach (MCDM) to investigate the important factors which greatly impact on initial signing process of land tenancy contracts between landlords and tenants by using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a tool. This qualitative decision making technique has not been used extensively in the country especially in the landlord tenant relations. For the purpose field survey was conducted in August 2015 and interviewed 10 respondents (landlords and tenants) in a hypothetical situation from the baseline survey through a well-developed questionnaire by using Tones method in AHP. However, AHP is a methodology that facilitates respondents to trade off nonmarket factors of land tenancy contracts. Thus, the information was collected for the important factors (criterion) which has great effect in the initial contract agreement in the landlord-tenant relationship in our research area within each tenancy contract (alternative), then the important factors were incorporated in the AHP framework and subjected to the landlord-tenant judgments for each tenancy contract. The finalized factors were character, financial position, men power, experience, reference, land condition and house availability. The results of the AHP application to data collected from six different villages found that landlords’ preferences are strongest for character, men power in share cropping, distance, financial position in fixed contract, experience and men power in owner cultivation and the tenant’s partialities are strongest for house availability, financial position in share contract, land condition, reference in lease contract and in owner cultivation nothing found important. In overall, it was  found that the dominant choice in the tenancy contract for landlords are share contract 45.7%, followed by rent contract 30.9% and less important owner cultivation 22.3% and in case of tenants it was found that the most preferable land tenancy contract is sharecropping 51.7% and fixed contract 41.7%, less effective 6.25% owner cultivation in the selected study villages. This study recommends that the agriculture and extension services departments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to apply AHP as tool in the wide range of multi sector in agriculture decisions, such as to determine best allocation for farm production, adaptation of latest technological tools and choices among different food and cash crop.

Key words: Analytical hierarchy process, Pakistan.