Scarcity and Enabling Adoption and Sustained Use of New Technologies

采用有利于发展中国家和农村社区的新技术不仅仅是改进材料和技术的问题。如果不广泛采用和持续使用，就无法实现效益。然而，成功引进和继续使用各种干预措施仍然是发展努力中的一个重大挑战。我们的项目解决了引入有益的新技术的问题;特别是，我们的目标是确定“难以获得”策略对采用和使用的影响。我们将比较新的分配程序引入改进的技术。我们的比较将包括预先进行的实验室实验，以告知我们的随机对照试验（RCT）的设计。我们希望我们的实验室实验将有助于设计将在一组村庄中进行的RCT-通过有限的可用性（即，稀缺供应）-将增加可取性，吸收率，采用和持续使用。这一评估扩大可持续性方法的项目将作为更大规模实施的试点。目前的建议是为一个“难以获得的设计”进行概念实验室实验的证明。“我们将比较扩大规模与可持续性的方法：传统的一次性分配与根据需求缓慢推出，从而创造稀缺性，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点一些行为机制。实验室实验的目的是对稀缺性的基本概念进行不同的试验，试图更好地理解心理学，并在实地实施之前改进方法。

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.