Risk and ambiguity preferences and the adoption of new agricultural technologies: Evidence from field experiments in rural India

Vartika Singh and Patrick Ward ()

No 1324, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Advances in agricultural development have largely been a direct result of increased usage of new technologies. Among other important factors, farmers’ perceptions of risks associated with the new technology as well as their ability or willingness to take risks greatly influences their adoption decisions. In this paper we conduct a series of field experiments in rural India in order to measure preferences related to risk, potential loss, and ambiguity. Disaggregating by gender, we find that on average women are significantly more risk averse and loss averse than men, though the higher average risk aversion arises due to a greater share of women who are extremely risk averse.

Keywords: Technology adoption; rural population; Agricultural technology; uncertainty; propect theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cbe, nep-dem, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01324.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Risk and Ambiguity Preferences and the Adoption of New Agricultural Technologies: Evidence from Field Experiments in Rural India (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1324

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().