The Role of Extension Communication in Enhancing Environmental Awareness among Farmers in Al-Dhuluya District \ Salah al-Din Governorate

• Marwan Naji Ali Ahmed1 , Ahmed.a.shihab2, Rasha Raad Abdullah Hassan3 , Yaser Muhsen Anter4

  Author

        The research aimed to identify the role of extension communication in enhancing environmental awareness among farmers in Al-Dhuluya District / Salah al-Din  Governorate in general, and to determine the correlation between the role of extension communication in enhancing environmental awareness and some of the studied autonomous variables, namely: (age, educational level, years of work in agriculture, partaking in training courses, sources of information, attitude towards environmental awareness), the research included a sample of (30) respondents representing (12%) of the total community , a questionnaire was prepared to collect research data consisting of two parts, the first part includes measuring the independent variables, While the second part includes a test to measure the role of extension communication in enhancing environmental awareness, which includes 28 paragraphs distributed over two areas related to environmental awareness, the researcher verified (content validity and face validity), while reliability was found by a split-half reliability, whose value reached (0.832) and the validity of the measurement (0.912), The results revealed that the overall level of the role of extension communication in enhancing environmental awareness was moderately high, with 53.3% of respondents falling within the medium category, indicating the effectiveness of extension channels and the capacity of the rural community in Al-Dhuluya district to adopt environmental sustainability concepts. Statistically significant correlations were found at the 0.01 level with training courses, sources of information, and attitudes toward environmental awareness, as well as at the 0.05 level with age, educational level, and farming experience, highlighting the combined influence of both communication-related and personal factors. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of extension communication largely depends on strengthening specialized training, diversifying information sources, and promoting positive attitudes among farmers, in addition to considering their personal characteristics such as age, educational level, and farming experience, due to their direct role in enhancing environmental awareness. Accordingly, the study recommends developing an integrated environmental extension strategy that emphasizes strengthening participation in high-quality training programs, diversifying extension information sources, adapting communication methods to farmers’ characteristics, simplifying extension messages, and encouraging farmers’ active participation and knowledge exchange to enhance environmental awareness and promote sustainable agricultural practices..

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