Speaker
Description
Recent studies highlight information constraints as an important barrier to technology adoption, but there is little evidence that allows to distinguish the roles of different information frictions for adoption decisions across different types of technology. We conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial among 1,200 farmers in Haryana, India, to promote adoption of early sown wheat varieties and zero tillage technology—two agricultural innovations that can help farmers adapt to climate change by increasing resilience to heat and water stress. Two distinct information treatments are studied, a one-time group training and an individual-specific advisory service. The experiment is designed to identify distinct impacts of general versus tailored agricultural advice across different types of technology and test for spillovers on other farmers’ adoption decisions. This is guided by a theoretical framework that decomposes optimal usage choices of technology into a systematic component and an idiosyncratic component, generating testable predictions regarding the distinct roles of general and tailored information. The insights derived from this study have strong policy implications and help in understanding the role of information frictions for adoption decisions beyond the specific technologies considered here.
| Keyword | Agricultural Economics |
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