Subscribe

Back

Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Elodie Becquey

Elodie Becquey is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in IFPRI’s West and Central Africa office in Senegal. She has over 15 years of research experience in diet, nutrition, and food security in Africa, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania.

Back

What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

Research topics

Projects and impact

Modeling tools

Project microsites

AI search assistant

What’s new

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

partnerships

The UW is one of the world’s preeminent public universities. It works to turn ideas into impact and transform lives and our world.

Homepage Link
45-451959_logo-university-of-washington-logo-transparent

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Signaling, screening, or sunk costs? Experimental evidence on how prices affect agricultural technology adoption in East Africa

2025Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Abate, Gashaw T.; Colen, Liesbeth; Kramer, Berber
Details

Signaling, screening, or sunk costs? Experimental evidence on how prices affect agricultural technology adoption in East Africa

Free samples are a widely used strategy to introduce new products or technologies, offering prospective users the opportunity to gain firsthand experience and potentially facilitate diffusion through social networks. However, concerns remain that giving away products for free may reduce their perceived value, increasing the risk that recipients will underutilize, repurpose, or resell the product rather than use it for its intended purpose. We explore three mechanisms through which charging a positive price may increase uptake, intended use and subsequent adoption of a new technology: (1) a signaling effect, where a positive price conveys higher product quality; (2) a screening effect, whereby payment deters users who do not value the product and targets those more likely to use it; and (3) a sunk cost effect, where paying a positive price induces a psychological commitment to use. We test how these pricing mechanisms shape uptake, use, and subsequent adoption of recently released seed varieties of staple food crops, drawing on a field experiment with smallholder farmers in Uganda and Ethiopia. We find that willingness to pay is a reliable predictor of subsequent use of seed trial packs, pointing to the value of modest prices for targeting likely adopters. At the same time, sunk cost effects are context specific and often negative, suggesting that charging farmers can reduce their ability or willingness to experiment. These findings carry important implications for how pricing strategies can be designed to promote technology adoption in low-income settings.

Year published

2025

Authors

Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Abate, Gashaw T.; Colen, Liesbeth; Kramer, Berber

Citation

Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Abate, Gashaw T.; Colen, Liesbeth; and Kramer, Berber. 2025. Signaling, screening, or sunk costs? Experimental evidence on how prices affect agricultural technology adoption in East Africa. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2369. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Uganda; Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Technology Adoption; Prices; Crops; Seeds; Costs; Agricultural Technology

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Confidence and information usage: Evidence from soil testing in India

2025Gars, Jared; Fishman, Ram; Kishore, Avinash; Rothler, Yoav; Ward, Patrick S.
Details

Confidence and information usage: Evidence from soil testing in India

Informational barriers are often considered to be a major constraint to the adoption of improved farming practices, inputs, and technologies by smallholder farmers. In the Indian context, it is widely believed that farmers misapply chemical fertilizers because they lack scientific information on soil conditions and corresponding fertilizer recommendations, thus resulting in imbalanced and potentially detrimental fertilizer application. Policymakers are frequently interested in providing farmers with various streams of information to overcome these informational barriers to optimize farming activities. However, such informational interventions frequently fail either because generic recommendations may be ill-suited for decision makers in highly heterogeneous agricultural environments or because farmers’ beliefs may be so entrenched as to make them unresponsive to new information. We implemented a field experiment in Bihar, India to test whether plot-specific fertilizer recommendations affect farmers’ fertilizer use. We find little evidence for sizable impacts on fertilizer use in general, though impacts are more apparent for low cost or costless recommendations such as increasing the use of highly subsidized fertilizers or shifting the timing of application. Despite modest evidence of such effects, even those fall short of their potential magnitude. We show that treated farmers who are less confident in their subjective beliefs about optimal fertilizer application rates (i.e., with more disperse priors) are more responsive to the recommendations and have a higher ex ante willingness to pay for soil testing. These results suggest that heterogeneity in beliefs may constrain the overall effectiveness of information provision, even when the information is tailored to individual farms. JEL Classification: D83, O13

Year published

2025

Authors

Gars, Jared; Fishman, Ram; Kishore, Avinash; Rothler, Yoav; Ward, Patrick S.

Citation

Gars, Jared; Fishman, Ram; Kishore, Avinash; Rothler, Yoav; and Ward, Patrick S. 2025. Confidence and information usage: Evidence from soil testing in India. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 107(5): 1406-1437. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12513

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Fertilizers; Soil Analysis; Smallholders

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12513 Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Women’s empowerment in Ghana’s agriculture sector: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

2025Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara
Details

Women’s empowerment in Ghana’s agriculture sector: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Key messages • Gender disparities in agriculture persist in Ghana, particularly in land ownership, credit access, and decision-making power, limiting women’s productivity and contribution to food security. • The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been instrumental in revealing these gender gaps in northern Ghana, but similar data are lacking for other regions, hindering national-level policy responsiveness. • Targeted interventions, such as securing land rights for women, improving access to financial services, and promoting participation in farmer-based organizations, are critical to advancing women’s empowerment and achieving gender-equitable agricultural development.

Year published

2025

Authors

Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara

Citation

Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel J.; and Go, Ara. 2025. Women’s empowerment in Ghana’s agriculture sector: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. WEAI Applications and Insights Brief 5. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176637

Country/Region

Ghana

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Agriculture; Gender; Land Ownership; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief