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Technology Adoption and Public Good Provision: Evidence from Hillside Irrigation in Rwanda

Last registered on June 08, 2016

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Technology Adoption and Public Good Provision: Evidence from Hillside Irrigation in Rwanda
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001323
Initial registration date
June 08, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
June 08, 2016, 11:05 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
June 08, 2016, 11:10 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region
Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
The World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
MINAGRI/SPIU/SOAS
PI Affiliation
UC Berkeley
PI Affiliation
The World Bank
PI Affiliation
UC Berkeley

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2015-08-10
End date
2018-09-14
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Irrigation investments have enormous potential to improve the lives of smallholder farmers who otherwise depend on rain-fed agriculture, through increasing yields, adding additional cultivating seasons, and reducing risk. Realizing these benefits often requires smallholders to simultaneously coordinate operations and maintenance (O&M) of the irrigation infrastructure and shift agricultural technologies. As a result, many of these investments are wasted due either to public goods market failures or limited adoption of new agricultural techniques. We simultaneously experimentally vary governance structures, access to complementary agricultural technologies, and the rollout of taxes on usage of the system within hillside irrigation schemes in Rwanda to test these hypothesized barriers to efficiency. Moreover, we exploit both a spatial discontinuity in the boundary of the schemes to evaluate the overall impact of access to irrigation. Lastly, we use variation in the nature of spillovers from both coordinating O&M and technology adoption driven by the size and composition of water user groups and the location of smallholder plots within each water user group to identify model driven effect heterogeneity.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Byiringiro, Esdras et al. 2016. "Technology Adoption and Public Good Provision: Evidence from Hillside Irrigation in Rwanda." AEA RCT Registry. June 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1323-2.0
Former Citation
Byiringiro, Esdras et al. 2016. "Technology Adoption and Public Good Provision: Evidence from Hillside Irrigation in Rwanda." AEA RCT Registry. June 08. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1323/history/8682
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2016-05-16
Intervention End Date
2017-03-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Farmer welfare (yields, profits, labor use, land rentals, migration, and education), adoption of high value crops, O&M (access to irrigation).
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
O&M: Randomization at water user group (WUG) level. WUG monitor randomized. Irrigation/operator working for the government (status quo) with probability 2/5, monitor appointed by the WUG with probability 3/10, monitor appointed by the WUG with reservation for farmer who cultivates high on the secondary pipe with probability 3/10. Stratified by size-irrigation site. 10 WUG per strata.
Minikits: Minikits randomized at farmer level in saturation design across WUG. Minikits cross randomized with O&M. No minikits with probability 1/2, 10% of farmers receive minikits with probability 1/6, 30% of farmers receive minikits with probability 1/6, 70% of farmers receive minikits with probability 1/6. Within WUG minikits randomly distributed.
Fees: Fee subsidies randomized at farmer level. Farmers receive no subsidy with probability 2/5. Farmers receive a 50% subsidy in Season C 2016 with probability 1/5. Farmers receive a 100% subsidy in Season C 2016 with probability 1/5. Farmers receive a 100% subsidy in Season C 2016 and Season A 2017 with probability 1/5.
OI: Farmers with plots inside the irrigation scheme are compared to farmers with plots outside the irrigation scheme, conditional on the plots being within 100m (50m) of spatially discontinuous boundary of irrigation scheme.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
O&M and minikit saturation are randomized at the water user group (WUG) level. Minikit provision conditional on saturation is randomized at the household level within WUG. Fee subsidy is randomized at the household level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
210 water user groups
Sample size: planned number of observations
1695 farmers
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
O&M: 84/63/63 water user groups (WUG) in government worker as monitor/WUG appointed farmer as monitor/WUG appointed farmer as monitor with reservation for farmer near top of secondary pipe, respectively.
Minikit: 105/35/35/35 water user groups (WUG) in 0% saturation/10% saturation/30% saturation/70% saturation. 1384/311 farmers don't receive/receive minikits.
Fee: 678/339/339/339 farmers receive no subsidy/50% 2016 Season C subsidy/100% 2016 Season C subsidy/100% 2016 Season C subsidy and 100% 2017 Season A subsidy.
OI: 666/766 (331/359) plots within 100m (50m) of discontinuity inside irrigation scheme/outside irrigation scheme.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda
IRB Approval Date
2015-07-13
IRB Approval Number
0462
IRB Name
Republic of Rwanda, National Ethics Committee (RNEC)
IRB Approval Date
2015-08-06
IRB Approval Number
00001497
IRB Name
INNOVATIONS FOR POVERTY ACTION IRB – USA
IRB Approval Date
2015-07-27
IRB Approval Number
10951

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials