Technology Adoption When Risk Attitudes Matter: Evidence from Incentivized Field Experiments in Niger

Awa Sanou, Lenis Liverpool-Tasie and Robert Shupp

No 205813, 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Fertilizer micro-dosing is a precision fertilizer application technique with the potential to improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods in the semi- arid-tropics. Despite more than two decades of disseminating the technology in Niger, micro-dosing adoption rates remain low with evidence of dis-adoption. Since fertilizer is a risk increasing technology, this paper estimates the effects of risk attitudes on fertilizer use and the practice of micro-dosing. We use different methods to elicit measures of risk aversion and supplement those with measures of aversion to ambiguity and loss. We find that incentivized measures of risk attitudes have better predictive power than general measures based on hypothetical survey questions. Among the risk attitudes explored, risk aversion tends to matter in the decision to use fertilizer and in the choice of an application technique when fertilizer is used. This indicates that ex post programs like insurance could promote the use of fertilizer and fertilizer micro-dosing among risk averse farmers.

Keywords: International Development; Risk and Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea15:205813

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205813

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