Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of transportation, packaging, excess supply, and a storage facility on perceived post-harvest wastage of vegetables and fruit in the Dambulla Dedicated Economic Center. This study adopted a quantitative research approach and thus, the study has addressed the survey type research method and a structured questionnaire was used to collect data and utilized a sample frame of farmers, whole-sellers, and retailers who enter the Dambulla Dedicated Economic Center and random sampling was used. To test the hypothesized relationships between the constructs, the multiple regression analysis was performed using SPSS 26.0 version. The results of the study discuss the 100% significant positive impact of transportation, 97% significant positive impact of packaging, 98% significant positive impact of a storage facility, and 99% significant positive impact of excess supply on post-harvest wastage of vegetables and fruit according to the Sri Lankan context. It is expected that the model will support the policymaking process regarding people keeping progress activities in economic centres and affecting increment of additional cost from farm to fork. This problem may affect families who depend on cultivation as well as final consumers who have to pay the additional cost. Therefore, ultimately this affects the development of Sri Lanka by increasing imports of the country. The unavailability of any mechanism to measure the number of people who visit the economic centre every day and there is a limitation of a proper mechanism to divide those people who visit the economic centre are farmers, wholesalers, or retailers. Through such policy implications, this study expects to eliminate the wastage of vegetables and fruit within the country and efficiently manage the wastage to utilize the country’s resources well.
