Experimental Design Details
The adoption of highly efficient water-saving irrigation technology (HEWIT) plays a key role in sustaining agricultural production in water-deficient area. Furthermore, in the countries undertaking agricultural reform, the emerging of large farms spurs demand for advanced irrigation technologies. However, few studies have examined the impact of technology and market information on the adoption process and resulting impacts on agricultural operational decisions and outcomes.
This project aims to use education on technology and market information as a treatment in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Hebei Province of China, covering approximately 1500 farm households. The goal is to investigate how technology and market information affect the adoption of HEWIT, and to examine the impacts of these advanced agricultural irrigation technologies on agricultural performance, including operational decisions and farm outputs.
The following hypotheses will be tested:
Hypothesis 1: Education on technology information will increase farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for adopting the technology.
Hypothesis 2: Education on market information will reduce the gap between farmers' WTP and the actual market price level of adopting the technology.
Hypothesis 3: The adoption of HEWIT increase water productivity.
Hypothesis 4: The adoption of HEWIT reduces labor inputs per unit of land.
Hypothesis 5: The adoption of advanced technology increases farmers' total profits and agricultural outputs.
The RCT will be nested in a large-scale field household survey conducted in Hebei Province in China, designed to evaluate the policy impact of Chinese government’s police intervention for groundwater overexploitation control.
Two types of surveys will be conducted. The first type is “regular farm household survey”, which will be done at villages. 944 households in 148 villages will be surveyed. The second type is “professional farm survey”, which aims to interview the farmer with farm size larger than 50 mu. Around 500 professional large farmers will be surveyed. Randomization will be done in both of the surveys.
There are two focused HEWITs, including Mobile Sprinkler Irrigation and Reel Irrigation Machine. Technology information and market information on them will be our information treatments.
During the survey, all farmers will be asked to complete a baseline survey to determine their knowledge level of the technology and market information of HEWITs. Each farmer's initial willingness to pay (WTP) for the technologies at the baseline survey status will be collected. Then, farmers in the treatment group will receive the treatment. On the second day of the survey, all farmers, including those in the treatment and control groups, will be phone called to collect updated WTP and knowledge information on the technologies.
After at least one growing season, a follow-up survey will be conducted as the endline survey for the RCT. During the baseline and endline surveys, farmers' agricultural production, non-farm work, living conditions, demographic information, etc., will be collected. Local socioeconomic and natural information will be collected through a village-level questionnaire face-to-face interview, answered by a village leader.
The field operation will be supported by governments at different administrative levels to guarantee the randomization of the sample selection and treatment assignment. At the grassroots level, village leaders will be informed by their corresponding township leaders about the general plan of the survey. Farmers will be randomly selected from the name list at the village leader's office 2 or 3 days prior to the survey event. Village leaders will cooperate with the research team to contact each of the sampled farmers and make an appointment with them to participate in our survey and RCT experiment at the village leader's office building.
All surveyed farmers will be informed by the survey investigators before the survey starts about the purpose of the survey (i.e., for purely scientific research purposes), the general survey structure (including an RCT experiment), the anticipated length of the survey, and other necessary information (such as self-introduction and payment information for participating in the survey) to obtain their agreement to participate in the survey.
The research subjects of this experiment are real farmers in Hebei Province of China. We will collect the contact information of all the surveyed individuals. Only adult farmers will be invited to participate in our field survey and experiment. The anticipated number of subjects is approximately 1500.