Ambiguity aversion and the adoption of no-tillage technology: evidence from a field experiment in China

Hantao Hao, Haixia Wu, Wenrong Qian and Yan Ge

China Agricultural Economic Review, 2025, vol. 18, issue 1, 85-101

Abstract: PurposeThis article aims to study the influence of ambiguity aversion on the adoption of conservation tillage technology by taking no-tillage technology as an example.Design/methodology/approachThis article accurately elicits farmers’ ambiguity aversion in real situations through a field experiment designed with monetary incentives, empirically analyzing the impact of ambiguity aversion on the adoption behavior related to agricultural technology.FindingsAmbiguity aversion significantly reduces the probability of farmers’ adoption of NT technology. Empirical results show that when ambiguity aversion of farmers increases by 1 unit, the probability of adopting NT technology decreases by 2.2%, which corresponds to a 15.3% sample mean. Mechanism analysis indicates that ambiguity aversion obviously hinders farmers’ technology adoption intention and social trust, thereby inhibiting the likelihood of adopting NT technology. The heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that farmers with lower education levels and older age groups are more sensitive to the influence of ambiguity aversion. However, ambiguity aversion has a less pronounced impact on large-scale farmers.Originality/valueThis paper provides two primary contributions. First, different from existing research focusing on agricultural technology adoption under deterministic conditions, this paper presents the research in the context of an uncertain probability distribution, exploring the impact of ambiguity aversion on farmers’ technology adoption. Second, to the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study to investigate the mechanism through which ambiguity aversion inhibits agricultural technology adoption.

Keywords: Ambiguity aversion; No-tillage technology; Field experiment; Wheat farmers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/caer/article/18/1/85/12678 ... option-of-no-tillage (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/caer/article-pdf/18/1/85/1 ... r-09-2023-0245en.pdf (application/pdf)

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:eme:caerpp:caer-09-2023-0245

DOI: 10.1108/CAER-09-2023-0245

Access Statistics for this article

China Agricultural Economic Review is currently edited by Dr Fu Qin, Dr Jikun Huang, Dr Kevin Z Chen, Dr Weiming Tian, Prof Daniel Sumner, Prof Xian Xin and Prof Holly Wang

More articles in China Agricultural Economic Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().