Technology Adoption under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia
通过赞比亚的实地实验，研究农户在新技术（提供肥料效益的树种）的两阶段投资决策，发现不确定性增加了初始采用率但降低了后续树木存活率，削弱了补贴的成本效益。
Technology adoption often requires multiple stages of investment. As new information emerges, agents may abandon a technology that was profitable in expectation. We use a field experiment to vary the payoffs at two stages of investment in a new technology: a tree species that provides on-farm fertilizer benefits. Farmer decisions identify the information about profitability that arrives between the take-up and follow-through stages. Results show that this form of uncertainty increases take-up but lowers average tree survival, decreasing the cost-effectiveness of take-up subsidies. Thus, uncertainty offers another explanation for why even costly technologies may go unused or be abandoned.