Overconfidence, Trust, and Information-Seeking among Smallholder Farmers: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

Hiwot Mesfin, Francesco Cecchi, Eleonora Nillesen and Nyasha Tirivayi

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023, vol. 72, issue 1, 79 - 122

Abstract: We investigate the role of overconfidence and trust in farmers’ information-seeking behavior using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Ethiopia. Our results show that overconfidence is widespread among farmers in our sample, predicts less information-seeking, and is associated with an efficiency loss. Moreover, we find that farmers tend to seek more information from extension agents than from peer farmers and that information-seeking increases when the source is perceived as more knowledgeable. When aiming to increase the adoption of productivity-enhancing practices, farmers’ overconfidence in their own information set and their trust in the quality of information shared should not be overlooked.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/719464 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/719464 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/719464

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().