Present bias predicts low adoption of profitable technologies: The case of livestock vaccination in northern Laos

Christian Creed () and Paulo Santos ()
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Christian Creed: Monash University
Paulo Santos: Monash University

No 2023-03, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Can behavioural characteristics explain the low adoption of profitable technologies? We explore this question by quantifying the importance of present bias on the decision to vaccinate cattle against foot-and-mouth disease, a simple and well-known technology that despite its high returns is largely overlooked. Our results show that livestock producers who exhibit a stronger present bias are much less likely to vaccinate their cattle, an effect which is robust to a large set of control variables (including wealth and access to information), larger than the effect of any other observed covariate and robust to plausible assumptions about the importance of unobserved determinants of adoption. We discuss some of the potential implications of these results for the design of vaccine delivery and to other policies that aim to overcome self-control problems.

Keywords: Technology adoption; vaccination; Foot and Mouth disease; Present bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O13 Q16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-sea
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