An application of multilevel model for the analysis of factors influencing paddy field productivity in the Northern Vietnamese Mountains

Hoang, Huong Thi Thu Van Rompaey, Anton Vu, Kim Chi Nguyen, An Thinh Vanacker, Veerle [UCL]

In the Northern Vietnamese Mountains, paddy fields are the main source of foods and an important indicator to define wealth in ethnic communities. This paper deals with an application of multilevel model to predict spatial patterns of paddy field productivity according to hierarchical levels such as individual fields, individual households and individual villages. The data on land use and rice productivity gathered in Sa Pa district (Lao Cai province) is used as a calibration and validation dataset. Totally, 60 households owning 136 paddy plots in four villages were interviewed. The results show that in Sa Pa, productivity of paddy fields results from human–environment interactions at different organizational levels of field, house-hold and village. The variables collected at field and household levels play more important role in the effective use of paddy fields than the variables at village level, as they account for resp. 81.2%, 18.7% and 0.1% of the variance in productivity.