Community Risk Perception of Local Child Trafficking and Its Associated Factors: Evidence from Kofale and Kokosa Districts, West Arsi, Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

The study aimed to assess community risk perception of domestic child trafficking and its associated factors. Researchers used a community-based cross-sectional design with 417 participants. The researchers employed stratified random sampling because the target study populations were diverse. A questionnaire was used to collect data. Principal component analysis and multivariate regression analysis were computed to analyze the data. In this study, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy was 0.901, which is highly significant. The Bartlett sphericity test was significant at the 0.00 level (χ²=3668.047, p=0.000), which justified further analysis. In the principal component analysis model, 17 measures of community risk perceptions regarding child trafficking were loaded onto four major risk perceptions that had eigenvalues greater than one, which jointly explained 67.8% of the variance. The analysis shows that child neglect risk perceptions were found to have the highest variance in the data set, which is 42%, while the fourth component represented 6.5% of the variation in the data set, which is the lowest value when compared to the first component. In this study, older people were less likely to perceive child neglect as a risk relative to the young people (p<.01). As a decision to transfer one’s own child to the users is made by a sole individual, usually a father, the probability of risk perception decreases by 0.036 (p < .05). The results suggested that there are people who support child smuggling; thus, for these groups of participants, the possibility that the child would encounter emotional risks would be secondary. This analysis found that the community perceived the trafficked children as more likely to face sexual intercourse. We strongly suggest that the local elders’ council declare social sanctions against the actors and formally communicate these measures to community members, with clear social consequences for any breach.