Hedonic Price Analysis of Characteristics Influencing Cattle Prices in Ngalda Livestock Markets in Yobe State

Abstract: This research was carried out to analyze characteristics influencing cattle prices in Ngalda livestock markets in Yobe State. Fika Local Government was purposively selected based on high concentration of cattle and cattle marketers, Ngalda cattle market has being the major distributing point of the cattle in the state. A total of 130 Buyers were selected using systematic sampling by truncation on weekly basis for period of 26 weeks. Descriptive statistics, Ginni Co-efficient and multiple regressions was employed in analyzing the collected data. The result of the study revealed that 100% of the respondents were male, 47% of cattle buyers were within age group of 31-40years and 81.5% were found to be married. The respondents (66%) were small buyers category, 21.5% medium and 12.3% were large scale buyers. The Ginni co-efficient model shows that the markets structure was competitive with low Ginni co-efficient of 0.474. The regression results indicated colour of the ear, shape of the cattle face and type of horn were the factors that influenced the buyer's preference. Hedonic regression shows that female cattle, big carcass size, short horn cattle and height were found to be statistically significant (P < 0.05), (P < 0.001), (P < 0.05) and (P < 0.001) respectively with positive coefficient across all the models implies that for any unit increase in these variables, buyers would be willing to pay more premium. 1t was therefore recommended that research efforts should target the characteristics of these cattle that buyers are sensitive to so as to enhance profitability production and marketing.