Receptiveness to advice, cognitive ability, and technology adoption

Bradford L. Barham, Jean-Paul Chavas (), Dylan Fitz and Laura Schechter

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2018, vol. 149, issue C, 239-268

Abstract: We construct a model of technology adoption with agents differing on two dimensions: their cognitive ability and their receptiveness to advice. While cognitive ability unambiguously speeds adoption, receptiveness to advice may speed adoption for individuals with low cognitive ability, but slow adoption for individuals with high cognitive ability. We conduct economic experiments measuring US farmers’ cognitive ability and receptiveness to advice and examine how these characteristics impact their speed of adoption of genetically modified (GM) corn seeds. The empirical analysis shows that early adopters are those who are both quite able cognitively and not receptive to advice.

Keywords: Technology adoption; Learning; Receptiveness to advice; Responsiveness to advice; Advice-taking; Cognitive ability; Economic experiments; Genetically modified seeds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D83 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811730375X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeborg:v:149:y:2018:i:c:p:239-268

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.12.025

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().