Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment

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 addres...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Kondylis, Florence, Mueller, Valerie, Zhu, Jessica
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Elsevier 2017
Subjects:	INFORMATION FAILURE TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27680

id	okr-10986-27680
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-276802021-05-25T10:54:42Z Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment Kondylis, Florence Mueller, Valerie Zhu, Jessica INFORMATION FAILURE TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION 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. 2017-08-08T21:04:17Z 2017-08-08T21:04:17Z 2017-03 Journal Article Journal of Development Economics 0304-3878 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27680 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Elsevier Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Africa Mozambique
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	INFORMATION FAILURE TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
spellingShingle	INFORMATION FAILURE TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION Kondylis, Florence Mueller, Valerie Zhu, Jessica Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
geographic_facet	Africa Mozambique
description	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.
format	Journal Article
author	Kondylis, Florence Mueller, Valerie Zhu, Jessica
author_facet	Kondylis, Florence Mueller, Valerie Zhu, Jessica
author_sort	Kondylis, Florence
title	Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
title_short	Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
title_full	Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
title_fullStr	Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
title_full_unstemmed	Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment
title_sort	seeing is believing? : evidence from an extension network experiment
publisher	Elsevier
publishDate	2017
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27680
_version_	1764465875860062208

Seeing is Believing? : Evidence from an Extension Network Experiment

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