Communicative interventions for collective action in the management of potato late blight: evidence from a framed field game experiment in Ethiopia

Abstract

Potato late blight remains a threat to food security and livelihood of millions of people in Ethiopia. Despite a rapid dispersal of the disease pathogen and farmers’ interdependency in managing it, the literature on agricultural extension and communication tends to frame the disease and its management as a problem of the individual farmer. This study appreciates late blight as a collective action problem whose management requires a corresponding re-configuration in information sharing and communicative practices. We employ a framed field game experiment with a mixed quantitative and qualitative method to explore how and to what extent different types and combinations of communicative interventions affect collective action in the management of the disease among farmers in Ethiopia. Interestingly, our quantitative findings revealed that the provision of technical information about interdependency involved in the management of the disease and social monitoring information about the management practices of other farmers negatively affected collective action. However, collective action performance significantly improved when farmers were given the opportunity to interactively communicate about their management strategies. Further qualitative investigation sheds light on how farmers used and made sense of the different communicative interventions to inform and adjust their individual decisions, coordinate collective strategies, pressure free-riders, and develop a shared identity. It is concluded that interventions that mainly promote the provision of technical and social information can be counterproductive in managing collective action problems such as late blight unless it is complemented with interactive communication and deliberation processes.

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“…Our study results suggested that for effective collective management of public bad risks, a farmer needs to have both the right knowledge and the opportunity to build a collective strategy. This finding aligns with [34], whose authors found that the provision of technical information about disease managerial practices alone can have a counterproductive effect on disease management decisions. On the other hand, a combination of both information provision and opportunities for communication and internal governance can lead to better decision-making.…”

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“…They could also help to make interactions and interdependencies (human-human and human-non-human) more tangible to farmers. In line with previous findings by others (Cieslik et al, 2021;Damtew et al, 2020), the experimental findings suggest that digital technologies and services could act as intermediaries that create a virtual space for deliberation, strategy building, and sense-making, and connecting farmers and potentially farmers and other actors.…”

“…This (initially) individual strategy created a collective risk and mats in more central positions started to get infected over time.R Re ef fl le ec ct ti io on n o on n t th he e g ga am me e' 's s r re es su ul lt ts sOur study results suggest that for effective collective management of public bad risks a farmer needs to have both the right knowledge and the opportunity to build a collective strategy. This finding aligns withDamtew et al (2020), who found that the provision of technical information about disease managerial practices alone can have a counterproductive effect on disease management decisions. On the other hand, a combination of both information provision and opportunities for communication and internal governance can lead to better decision-making.…”

“…As a result, services specifically built to support documenting and dissemination information about agricultural problems are targeting individual decision-making (Trendov et al, 2019;Van Der Waals, Denner, Van Rij, & Korsten, 2003). Yet, in light of our findings and those by Damtew et al (2020), which inform us that addressing complex agricultural problems demands collective sense-making and action to prevent them from becoming public…”

“…However in the case of that the information became usable when farmers could share and discuss the information among each other, which they did through face-to-face interaction (Sarku, 2021). In Ethiopia, a game-experiment showed that decision-making about disease prevention improved and resulted in more collective action and better individual and collective results when farmers could communicate and deliberate about management strategies (Cieslik et al, 2021;Damtew et al, 2020). As I will also further discuss in the next section, digitalization may threaten collective action and public bad management, when targeting individual instead of collective action and/or replacing existing spaces for deliberation and sense making.…”