Autonomy and Technology Adoption
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. We replicate these findings in a complementary laboratory experiment and find suggestive evidence that autonomy increases persistence by improving recommendation recall. Our results suggest that preserving choice can enhance the long-term effectiveness of expert advice and targeted subsidies.
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