Autonomy and Technology Adoption

Benjamin Bushong; Carolina Corral; Xavier Giné; Aprajit Mahajan; Enrique Seira

doi:10.3386/w27681

Autonomy and Technology Adoption

Benjamin Bushong, Carolina Corral, Xavier Giné, Aprajit Mahajan & Enrique Seira

Working Paper 27681

DOI 10.3386/w27681

Issue Date August 2020

Revision Date July 2026

We examine whether autonomy increases adherence to expert recommendations in technology adoption. In a context where farmers overuse fertilizer, we ran a field experiment that combined recommendations with either a restrictive subsidy tied to expert-recommended inputs or a flexible subsidy preserving farmer autonomy over input choice. In the short run, farmers adopted expert recommendations at similar rates regardless of subsidy autonomy and reduced fertilizer over-use by two-thirds. In the longer run, after the intervention ended, farmers with autonomy were significantly more likely to persist with the expert recommendations. A laboratory experiment with the same core structure, a tighter autonomy manipulation, and a different population replicates our main results and tests competing mechanisms. Formal mechanism tests are consistent with memory fully mediating the effect of autonomy on persistence, and persistence fully mediating the effect on long-run performance. Our results suggest that preserving choice can enhance the long-term effectiveness of expert advice and targeted subsidies.

We are grateful to Qué Funciona para el Desarrollo (QFD) for managing the field experiment, to Fertilab for the soil analyses, to Agropecuaria Amozoc for providing and mixing fertilizers and to Ipampa S.C. for the provision of agricultural extension services. We would also like to thank Ned Augenblick, Pranab Bardhan, Chico Ferreira, Andy Foster, Supreet Kaur, Berk Özler and Chris Udry for very helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank seminar participants at various workshops for their comments and suggestions. Michelle Infanzón, Meritxell Martínez, Victor Manuel Pérez, Bernardo Ribeiro, Mónica Vargas and Victor Vergara provided outstanding research assistance. We also gratefully acknowledge funding from 3ie, BASIS (UC Davis), the World Bank and ISPC-SPIA (under the grant “Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR System (SIAC)"). Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the World Bank, its executive directors, or the countries they represent. The field experiment was reviewed and approved by the ITAM IRB and UCLA IRB # 12–001756 and is registered in the AEA RCT Registry with the unique identifying number AEARCTR-0006264. The lab experiment was reviewed and approved by the MSU HRPP # 00009114. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Benjamin Bushong, Carolina Corral, Xavier Giné, Aprajit Mahajan, and Enrique Seira, "Autonomy and Technology Adoption," NBER Working Paper 27681 (2020), https://doi.org/10.3386/w27681.

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