Mediating Role of Pluriactivity in the Relationship Between Rural Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and Income Doubling in Nigeria's Bauchi State

The majority of rural households in emerging nations are currently diversifying their sources of income. Rural income diversification focuses primarily on improving the use of the currently available production resources and boosting household income, as opposed to investment portfolios in finance that diversify to reduce risks. Despite substantial discussion of the causes or impacts of rural income pluriactivity, there are no well-established standards for the use of indicators to record actual rural income diversification in the existing literature of the study area. Therefore, in lieu of the foregoing, attempt was made to assess the mediating role of pluriactivity in the relationship between rural entrepreneurship ecosystem and income doubling in Nigeria's Bauchi state using cross-sectional data elicited by a well-structured questionnaire coupled with interview schedule from 322 households selected via a multi-stage random sampling technique. With the aid of descriptive and inferential statistics, the study objectives were achieved. The inferential statistics encompass diversification index viz. Entropy index, Herfindahl-Hirschman index, Berry's index, and, Ginevičius index; decision regression model; and, confirmatory factor analysis. Empirically, the findings established that pluriactivity was high among most of the households and it was majorly driven by educational level. Besides, pluriactivity is established to enhance incomes of low-to-medium income levels households while it imposes a progressive declining effect on the income of households with high income level. Nevertheless, operational holding was the kick-starting impetus that derived pluriactivity of the rural economy. Furthermore, economic factor, a push effect that motivates rural entrepreneurship, has strong influence that will enhance pluriactivity capacity to double rural households' income in the long-run. Therefore, for a flourishing rural entrepreneurship that will drive sustainable growth and development of rural economy in the study area, the study suggests that households should see pluriactivity as a business entity independent of a household against the old norms that view both as just a single entity. As a rider, onus lies on policymakers to harp more on out of class education as a measure to enhance the risk bearing ability of the rural populace, thus mitigation to the posed challenges of weather-induced vagaries threatening livelihood in the study area.