Social networks and technology adoption in Northern Mozambique

Oriana Bandiera and Imran Rasul

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Despite their potentially strong impact on poverty, agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly. Using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in Mozambique, we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks. Since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others, we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters. Dynamic considerations, however, suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free-ride on the information gathered by others. We present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse-U. In line with information sharing, the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others. The data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context. In particular social networks are precisely identified, and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation.

Keywords: Social networks; technology adoption; information sharing. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2002-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3539/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique (2006)
Working Paper: Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique (2002)
Working Paper: Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:3539

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