Assessing fish farm economic performance and access to financial services nexus: Empirical evidence from Ghana

Abstract

Abstract This study assesses the factors influencing of access to financial services (AFS) and its impact on fish farm economic performance by employing a multiple-stage random sampling approach to sample 131 fish farms from two regions in Ghana. We accounted for the selection bias issue using the endogenous treatment regression model. The results reveal that factors such asgender, education, fish farm size, asset ownership, off-farm work, and distance influence farmers' access to financial services. The result also showed that AFS improves fish farm economic performance. Moreover, we observe that female farmers and high-income households with access to financial services have higher fish yields and net returns than their counterparts. The study’s findings have provided evidence that AFS can be a transmission route in the efforts to enhance aquaculture development in the nation. Our results serve as a call to the government and policymakers to provide strategies and methods to make financial services accessibility easy and straightforward.