Farmers' perceptions and adoption of new agricultural technology: evidence from analysis in Burkina Faso and Guinea, West Africa

Abstract

Economists investigating consumer demand have accumulated considerable evidence showing that consumers generally have subjective preferences for characteristics of products and that their demand for products is significantly affected by their perceptions of the product's attributes. However, the role of farmers' preferences in adoption decisions have received very limited attention in adoption studies conducted by economists. This paper tests the hypothesis that farmers' perceptions of technology characteristics significantly affect their adoption decisions. The analysis, conducted with Tobit models of modern sorghum and rice varietal technologies in Burkina Faso and Guinea, respectively, strongly supports this hypothesis. Our results provide a strong case for future adoption studies to expand the range of variables used away from the broad socio-economic, demographic and institutional factors to include farmers' subjective perceptions of the characteristics of new agricultural technologies. 0169-5150/95/$09.50

Predicting Adoption of Innovations by Farmers: What is Different in Smallholder Agriculture?

“…Though there often appears to be available cheap labor, labor costs and constraints can easily be underestimated in smallholder settings (Deininger and Byerlee 2012;Mwangi and Kariuki 2015;White et al 2005). In our judgment, the relative advantage offered by innovations with labor saving and more convenient features are often similarly influential in both settings, particularly when seasonality of labor constraints is considered (Adesina and Baidu-Forson 1995;Knowler et al 2001;Moser and Barrett 2006).…”

“…It has been suggested that, compared to other farmers, smallholders often have a greater need for education about the relevance of or need for an innovation (e.g., by explaining that soil conservation is a greater problem than the farmers had appreciated) (Adesina and Baidu-Forson 1995;Bekele and Drake 2003). Where this is true, it may mean that extension programs are particularly influential on the speed of adoption, and more influential on the ultimate level of adoption, relative to farmers in developed countries (Brown et al 2018a).…”

Adoption decision and use intensity of soil and water conservation measures by smallholder subsistence farmers in Dedo District, Western Ethiopia

“…The model permits the investigation of the decision of whether or not to adopt and the conditional level of use of the technology if the initial adoption decision was made (Adesina and Baidu-Forson, 1995). The Tobit model also has an advantage in that its coefficients can be further disaggregated to determine the effect of a change in the i-th variable on changes in the probability of adopting the technology and the expected use intensity of the technology.…”

Diffusion and Adoption of Nerica Rice Varieties in Côte D’ivoire

“…It might well be that despite their qualities, NERICA adoption prospects are not much better than those of existing modern varieties because of other technological and socioeconomic constraints unrelated to their specific varietal attributes. For example, existing studies on non-NERICA technology adoption in Africa have found that credit and inputs supplies constraints, post-harvest rice processing problems, output markets constraints, etc., are important determinants for adoption of new varieties (Adesina and Zinnah 1993;Adesina and Seidi 1995;Adesina and Baidu-Forson 1995). In such cases, it would arguably be better to devote relatively more resources to alleviating these technological and socioeconomic constraints and less on NERICA-specific dissemination activities.…”