Citation: Kassem, H.S.; Hussein, M.A.; Ismail, H. The Dilemma of Fraudulent Pesticides in the Agrifood Sector: Analysis of Factors Affecting Farmers’ Purchasing Behavior in Egypt. Agronomy 2022, 12, 1626. https://doi.org/10.3390/ agronomy12071626 Academic Editor: Pankaj Bhatt Received: 17 May 2022 Accepted: 6 July 2022 Published: 6 July 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). agronomy Article The Dilemma of Fraudulent Pesticides in the Agrifood Sector: Analysis of Factors Affecting Farmers’ Purchasing Behavior in Egypt Hazem S. Kassem 1, * , Mohamed A. Hussein 2 and Hamed Ismail 3 1 Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Society, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia 2 Extension Programs Research Department, Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza 12619, Egypt; drmg35055@gmail.com 3 Department of Food Science, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G-2W1, Canada; ismailh@uoguelph.ca * Correspondence: hskassem@ksu.edu.sa; Tel.: +966-581045671 Abstract: Fraudulent pesticides suggest a solemn risk to sustainable agricultural production, en- vironmental sustainability, and human health due to their unrevealed composition and quality. Nonetheless, their large-scale utilization in the agrifood sector relies on many factors, such as per- sonal, institutional, and legislative ones. This study aimed to evaluate farmers’ perceptions of fraudulent pesticides and examine their marketability elements. The data came from 394 farmers’ structured questionnaires from Dakahlia governorate, Egypt. The factorial analysis revealed beliefs, health and environmental risks, quality recognition, price, and policies as the critical drivers for buy- ing fraudulent pesticides. The cluster analysis disclosed two varied farmer segments—“conventional” and “conscious”—based on perception. “conventional farmers” signify 59.9% of the sample and reveal typical farmer behaviors and give more attention to factors such as beliefs and product price. Contrarily, “conscious farmers” symbolize a more sentient group about policy, product quality, and health and environmental issues. Significant differences (p < 0.01) occurred between the two seg- ments, corresponding to their education, farming activity, farm size, and farming experience. The findings suggest reinforcing the extant pesticide laws and regulations’ administration mechanisms, implementing deliberate measures to increase public awareness of the consequences resulting from fraudulent pesticide use, and improving recognition behavior by detecting fraudulent pesticides with digital technologies among all stakeholders. Keywords: pesticides; fraud; policy; farmers; perception; sustainable agriculture; behavior; Egypt 1. Introduction Product fraud has been on the rise worldwide and continues to vex innovation, en- trepreneurship, and economic progress in many countries [1]. It has many forms and manifests itself in the agrifood sector, spanning from economically motivated adulteration to large-scale agriculture-product smuggling [2,3]. Economically motivated adulteration is the deliberate sale of substandard ingredients or food products to make a profit [4,5]. This fraud’s common types involve supplanting one ingredient with another, color or flavor modification using forbidden substances, and an original component’s substitution or dilution with an inexpensive product [6,7]. However, smuggling is the illegal transfer of agricultural products across an international border breaching customs laws and reg- ulations [8]. A price disparity between origin and its (prohibited) destination drives this practice, leading to crucial revenue losses to a country’s exports [9]. Pesticides are agricultural production’s strategic commodities [10]. Their utilization has rapidly expanded due to the increased adoption of intensification systems, responding Agronomy 2022, 12, 1626. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12071626 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy