Factors That Influence Youth's Decision to Work in the Palm Oil Field: The Case of FELDA

Abstract

Our study empirically examines the association between factors that influence youth to work in oil palm field in Malaysia. We acknowledge that our study is important in the light of government decision to import more foreign worker in order to fulfill jobs in 4Ds classification (dirty, dangerous, demeaning and difficult) including palm oil plantation, construction and manufacturing. We focus on the youth’s decision – whether they want to work or not to work in palm oil field – due to several reason. First and foremost, we recognise that oil palm is one of the most important resources to Malaysia, and its sustainability largely depends on the behaviour of future generation. Second, we concentrate on the factors that influence the decision of the youth whether to work or not to work in palm oil field in order to address the problem on why majority of the youth are reluctant to be involved in palm oil plantation. Third, we study the perception of the youth on the job related to palm oil field. Our sample comprise of 278 youth around the State of Johor, which is recognised as the second largest states with palm oil field in Malaysia. Our findings demonstrate that personal satisfaction, government policy and economic benefit increase the youth extrinsic factor, while workplace environment reduce the respondent extrinsic factor. In regard to the intrinsic factor, our results exhibit that personal satisfaction, government policy and regulation improve respondent’s intrinsic factor, while job status reduce youth’s intrinsic factor. We suggest that government should provide attractive scheme and rebranding the job in the palm oil plantation in order to attract youth participation in the palm oil field. The findings from this study will be beneficial to the policymakers in solving labour issues in palm oil field by training more Malaysian workers to be ready to work in palm oil plantation rather than importing more foreign worker