Improving smallholder agriculture via video-based group extension
研究在印度向女性农民提供视频作为人工推广的补充，发现视频推广对水稻产量有正向影响，但平均效应因右尾分布而不精确，分位数回归和贝叶斯模型证实了效果，其中强调劳动成本和榜样示范的子处理效果更佳。
Providing agricultural advice at scale poses operational challenges. Technology may help if repeating content reinforces learning for recipients and thus improves adoption, but risks reducing efficacy given limited customization and human interaction. We tested videos shared with female farmers in India as a supplement to standard human-provided extension services promoting a climate-smart practice, System Rice Intensification. The average treatment effects are large but imprecise because of non-normally distributed outcomes, specifically fat right tails. Weighted quantile regressions show that the imprecision in estimating an average treatment effect comes from farmers with output or yields in the upper quantiles. Both quantile regressions of the 25% and 50% quantiles and a Bayesian hierarchical model (robust to several priors) reveal positive treatment effects, and two subtreatments, one that reinforces information on labor costs from adoption and a second that presents role models to motivate adoption, lead to even higher estimated treatment effects on output.