Scarcity and Enabling Adoption and Sustained Use of New Technologies

采用有利于发展中和农村社区的新技术不仅仅是改进材料和技术的问题。如果没有足够广泛的采用和持续的使用，就不可能实现好处。然而，在各种干预措施的发展努力中，成功引进和继续使用仍然是一项重大挑战。我们的项目解决了引入有益的新技术的问题；具体地说，我们的目标是确定“难以获得”战略对采用和使用的影响。我们将比较引入改进技术的新分配程序。我们的比较将包括提前进行的实验室实验，以便为我们的随机对照试验(RCT)的设计提供信息。我们预计，我们的实验室实验将有助于设计将在一组村庄进行的RCT--通过有限的可获得性(即，稀缺供应)引入新技术--将具有更高的可取性、接受率、采用率和持续使用。该项目评估扩大到可持续性的方法，将作为更大规模实施的试点。目前的提议是对一种“很难设计”的东西进行概念验证实验室实验。我们将比较扩大规模以实现可持续性的方法：传统的一次性分销和基于需求的缓慢推出，从而造成稀缺性，并可能增加对新技术的兴趣和需求。在开展大型现场实验之前，我们将在实验室实验中试行一些行为机制。实验室实验的目标是用稀缺的基本概念的不同变体进行试验，试图更好地理解心理学，并在将其付诸实践之前改进方法。

Adoption of new technologies that would be beneficial to developing and rural communities is not just a matter of improved materials and technology. Benefits cannot be realized without sufficiently-wide adoption and sustained use. However, successful introduction and continued use remain a significant challenge in development efforts across all kinds of interventions. Our project addresses the problems of introducing beneficial new technologies; in particular, our goal is to determine the effect of a "hard to get" strategy on adoption and usage. We will compare novel allocation procedures for introducing improved technologies. Our comparison will include laboratory experiments in advance to inform the design of our randomized controlled trial (RCT). We expect that our laboratory experiments will help in designing the RCT that will be conducted in a set of villages--with an introduction of new technology via limited availability (i.e., scarce supply)--will have increased desirability, uptake rates, adoption, and sustained use. This project assessing methods of scale-up to sustainability will serve as a pilot for a larger-scale implementation. The current proposal is for conducting a proof of concept laboratory experiments for a 'hard to get design.' We will be comparing methods of scale-up to sustainability: traditional all-at-once distribution versus slow rollout based on need, thereby creating scarcity and presumably increasing interest and demand for a new technology. Before rolling out the large field experiments, we will pilot some of the behavioral mechanisms in lab experiments. The goal of the laboratory experiments is to pilot with different variations of the basic idea of scarcity, trying to better understand the psychology and refine the method before implementing it in the field.