Social Learning and Incentives for Experimentation and Communication
By Ariel BenYishay, A. M. Mobarak. The Review of Economic Studies, 2018
310 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Low adoption of agricultural technologies holds large productivity consequences for developing countries. Many countries hire agricultural extension agents to communicate with farmers about new technologies, even though a large academic literature has established that information from social networks is a key determinant of product adoption. We incorporate social learning in extension policy using a large-scale field experiment in which we communicate to farmers using different members of social networks. We show that communicator own adoption and effort are susceptible to small performance incentives, and the social identity of the communicator influences others’ learning and adoption. Farmers appear most convinced by communicators who share a group identity with them, or who face comparable agricultural conditions. Exploring the incentives for injection points in social networks to experiment with and communicate about new technologies can take the influential social learning literature in a more policy-relevant direction.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Media Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a4a754cfa0cf3fcfc31db6e9f6890cfa140cf934
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Citations in the corpus
- Using agriculture for development: Supply- and demand-side approaches (2020, unknown): “contact farmers with the payment of bonuses proportional to their success with diffusion of the innovation in their community may be necessary and can be effective (BenYishay and Mobarak, 2019).”
- Can Network Theory-Based Targeting Increase Technology Adoption? (2018, unknown): “2 It has been shown to increase productivity by 40-100% in tests conducted under controlled conditions (Haggblade and Tembo 2003); in large-sample field tests conducted under realistic “as implemented by government” conditions (BenYishay and Mobarak 2019), and using experimental variation among vill”
- Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change (2016, background): “Economists have found that individuals’ engagement with new services such as agricultural technology, insurance, and retirement plans can increase their peers’ engagement with the service (e.g., BenYishay & Mobarak, 2014; Cai, de Janvry, & Sadoulet, 2015; Duflo & Saez, 2003).”