TY - JOUR
T1 - Seeing is believing? Evidence from an extension network experiment
AU - Kondylis, Florence
AU - Mueller, Valerie
AU - Zhu, Jessica
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation , Inc. (3ie) through the Global Development Network (GDN); the Mozambique office of the United States Agency for International Development; the Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development; the Belgian Poverty Reduction Partnership and the Gender Action Plan; and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and financed by the CGIAR Fund donors. The authors benefited from comments provided by Jenny Aker, Luc Behagle, Madhur Gautam, Markus Goldstein, Maria Jones, Rashid Lajaaj, Mark Lundell, Mushfiq Mobarak, Tewodaj Mogues, Glenn Sheriff, David Spielman; and seminar participants at the CSAE (Oxford), the Mid-Western Economic Development Conference, the NEUDC at Boston University, The Ohio State University, the Paris School of Economics, the University of Georgia, the World Bank, and IFPRI. The views expressed in this article do not reflect those of the World Bank, 3ie, or their members. The authors would like to thank Pedro Arlindo, Jose Caravela, Destino Chiar, Isabel Cossa, Beatriz Massuanganhe, and Patrick Verissimo for their collaboration and support throughout the project. John Bunge, Ricardo da Costa, and Cheney Wells provided excellent field coordination; Siobhan Murray and João Rodrigues impressive research assistance. Usual disclaimers apply.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Extension is designed to enable lab-to-farm technology diffusion. Decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers, and from extension agents to contact farmers (CFs). CFs should then train other farmers in their communities. Such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues. We run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the CF model with a direct CF training on the diffusion of a new technology. All villages have CFs and access the same extension network. In treatment villages, CFs additionally receive a three-day, central training on the new technology. We track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network: from extension agents to CFs, and from CFs to other farmers. Directly training CFs leads to a large, statistically significant increase in adoption among CFs. However, higher levels of CF adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers.
AB - Extension is designed to enable lab-to-farm technology diffusion. Decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers, and from extension agents to contact farmers (CFs). CFs should then train other farmers in their communities. Such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues. We run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the CF model with a direct CF training on the diffusion of a new technology. All villages have CFs and access the same extension network. In treatment villages, CFs additionally receive a three-day, central training on the new technology. We track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network: from extension agents to CFs, and from CFs to other farmers. Directly training CFs leads to a large, statistically significant increase in adoption among CFs. However, higher levels of CF adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers.
KW - Africa
KW - Agriculture
KW - Information failure
KW - Technology diffusion
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.10.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.10.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84995740361
SN - 0304-3878
VL - 125
SP - 1
EP - 20
JO - Journal of Development Economics
JF - Journal of Development Economics
ER -