1 Understanding Technology Adoption : Fertilizer in Western Kenya

نویسندگان

  • Esther Duflo
  • Michael Kremer
چکیده

The question of the determinants of the adoption of new technology in agriculture is of central interest to both academics and policy makers. In this paper, we report the results from a unique set of field experiments conducted in Western Kenya over five years, which were designed to investigate a range of hypotheses on the determinants and barriers to the adoption of a profitable technology. In the experiments, meaningful programs expected to have an effect on the adoption of fertilizer under alternative hypotheses were proposed to randomly selected groups of farmers. We find that while know-how plays a role and can partly be overcome, other factors, such as the inability to save over even short periods of time may be even stronger impediments.

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تاریخ انتشار 2003