Technology Adoption Under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia
Technology Adoption Under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia
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不确定性下的技术采用：赞比亚的采用和后续投资
DOI：
10.3386/w21414
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
S. Bell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. K. Jack;Paulina Oliva;Christopher Severen;Elizabeth Walker;S. Bell
许多技术采用决策都是在初始采用后后续技术投资的成本或收益不确定的情况下做出的。随着新信息的出现，代理商可能更愿意放弃一项在采用时看起来有利可图的技术。当使用补贴来提高采用率时，低跟进率（参与后续投资）尤其成问题，部分原因是它们可能会吸引技术价值较低的用户。我们使用具有两个随机阶段的现场实验来产生与采用和实施新技术相关的收益的外生变化：一种为采用农民提供私人肥料效益的树种。我们的实证结果显示，即使付出了积极的代价来采用该技术，放弃该技术的比率仍然很高。实验变异为不确定性下的跨期决策结构模型提供了新的识别来源。估计结果表明，农民在使用后会经历净收益的特殊冲击，这增加了使用量，但降低了农民每棵树的平均存活率。我们模拟了不同不确定性水平下的反事实结果，并观察到只有当不确定性水平相对较低时，补贴技术的采用才会影响采用者的构成。因此，不确定性为为什么许多补贴技术即使在使用率很高的情况下也可能无法得到利用提供了额外的解释。
Many technology adoption decisions are made under uncertainty about the costs or benefits of subsequent investments in the technology after the initial take-up. As new information is realized, agents may prefer to abandon a technology that appeared profitable at the time of take-up. Low rates of follow-through (engagement in subsequent investments) are particularly problematic when subsidies are used to increase adoption, in part because they may attract users with a lower value for the technology. We use a field experiment with two stages of randomization to generate exogenous variation in the payoffs associated with taking up and following through with a new technology: a tree species that provides private fertilizer benefits to adopting farmers. Our empirical results show high rates of abandoning the technology, even after paying a positive price to take it up. The experimental variation offers a novel source of identification for a structural model of intertemporal decision making under uncertainty. Estimation results indicate that the farmers experience idiosyncratic shocks to net payoffs after take-up, which increase take-up but lower average per farmer tree survival. We simulate counterfactual outcomes under different levels of uncertainty and observe that subsidizing take-up of the technology affects the composition of adopters only when the level of uncertainty is relatively low. Thus, uncertainty provides an additional explanation for why many subsidized technologies may not be utilized even when take-up is high.
影响因子：
7.6
作者：
DECI, EL
通讯作者：
DECI, EL