Did you really get the message? Using text reminders to stimulate adoption of agricultural technologies

Catherine Larochelle, Jeffrey Alwang and Elli Travis

No 235423, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: This paper provides evidence from a randomized control trial (RCT) conducted among potato farmers in Northern Ecuador about the impact of receipt of text message reminders on farmer knowledge about and adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) practices. The paper provides novel empirical evidence of the potential roles of reminders as post-training follow-ups in an agrarian setting. Using psychological constructs, we examine competing explanations for non-standard decision making such as low adoption of beneficial agricultural technologies. Farmers who received text messages have significantly higher knowledge scores and are more likely to adopt most IPM practices than those in the control group. The experiment provides evidences that text messages lead to behavioral changes by reducing inattention and sub-optimal heuristics in the case of complex decisions.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; International Development; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2016-05-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Did You Really Get the Message? Using Text Reminders to Stimulate Adoption of Agricultural Technologies (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235423

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235423

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