Present Bias Predicts Low Adoption of Profitable Technologies: The Case of Livestock Vaccination in Northern Laos

Christian Creed
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Christian Creed: Monash University

Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers from Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers

Abstract: Can behavioural characteristics explain the low adoption of profitable technologies? We explore this question by quantifying the importance of present bias on cattle producers’ decision to vaccinate against foot-and-mouth disease, a simple and well-known technology that, despite its high returns, is largely overlooked. Our results show that 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 insensitive 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; Present Bias JEL Classification: O10; O13; Q16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ban, nep-dev and nep-sea
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