Improved Rice Technology Adoption: The Role of Spatially-Dependent Risk Preference

Omotuyole Isiaka Ambali, Francisco Areal and Nikolaos Georgantzís ()
Additional contact information
Omotuyole Isiaka Ambali: Department of Applied Economics and Marketing, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AR, UK

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: This study analyses farmers’ adoption of improved rice technology, taking into account farmers’ risk preferences; the unobserved spatial heterogeneity associated with farmers’ risk preferences; farmers’ household and farm characteristics; farm locations, farmers’ access to information, and their perceptions on the rice improved varieties (i.e., high yield varieties, HYV). The study used data obtained from field experiments and a survey conducted in 2016 in Nigeria. An instrumental-variable probit model was estimated to account for potential endogenous farmers’ risk preference in the adoption decision model. Results show that risk averse (risk avoidant) farmers are less likely to adopt HYV, with the spatial lags of farmers’ risk attitudes found to be a good instrument for spatially unobserved variables (e.g., environmental and climatic factors). We conclude that studies supporting policy action aiming at the diffusion of improved rice varieties need to collect information, if possible, on farmers’ risk attitudes, local environmental and climatic conditions (e.g., climatic, topographic, soil quality, pest incidence) in order to ease the design and evaluation of policy actions on the adoption of improved agricultural technology.

Keywords: agricultural technology; farmer’s technology adoption; endogenous variable; risk attitudes; spatial dependence; risk panel lottery; unobserved heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/8/691/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/8/691/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:8:p:691-:d:599421

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().