@article{19116e8c93604c278e8355cfc8e582a4,
title = "Constraints to adopting soil fertility management practices in Malawi: A choice experiment approach",
abstract = "Though problems related to low and declining soil fertility continue to impede agricultural production and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers in this region – those cultivating two hectares or less – have shown reluctance to adopt practices at scale that help conserve or enhance soil quality. Employing a discrete choice-based experiment, we find evidence that farmers{\textquoteright} propensity to adopt soil fertility management (SFM) practices increases with improved access to mineral fertilizers, and when farmers receive relevant technical training on soil fertility improving technologies. A unique aspect of our study is our focus on understanding how smallholders{\textquoteright} stated SFM preferences relate to their perceptions of recent local climatic variation. We find that farmers who perceive that rainfall amounts are decreasing are less willing to adopt crop rotations to improve soils. Our findings suggest that policies designed to increase adoption of SFM practices are more likely to succeed when they provide farmers with inputs that farmers perceive as complementary to SFM, including mineral fertilizer, and when they are built around an understanding of farmers{\textquoteright} perceptions of climatic variability.",
keywords = "Choice experiment, Climatic variability, Farmer perceptions, Malawi, Soil fertility, Sub-Saharan Africa",
author = "Kwabena Krah and Hope Michelson and Emilie Perge and Rohit Jindal",
note = "Our research team conducted the choice experiment in 2013. Each respondent was assigned two choice set scenarios. The choice experiment questions were administered first and enumerators explained the choice set scenarios to the respondent in the local language. In each choice set scenario, the respondent was provided with three alternatives (i.e. \u201CPackage A\u201D, \u201CPackage B\u201D and \u201COpt out\u201D), and the respondent was asked to indicate her preferred choice. This occurred twice; all farmers were shown two sets of choices. A total of 266 smallholders, each from a unique household, answered the choice experiment questions yielding a total of 532 observations. Out of the 530 valid choice set responses, approximately 95% consisted of farmers accepting either \u201CPackage A\u201C or \u201CPackage B\u201D; the remaining 5% consisted of individuals choosing the \u201COpt out\u201D alternative. The distribution of responses suggests that the majority of the farmers sampled are willing to adopt some form of SFM practices conditional on receiving a measure of support. While the hypothetical setting of the choice experiment might have driven respondents to make choices that might not reflect their true preferences ( Fifer, Rose, & Greaves, 2014; Hensher, 2010 ), the inclusion of an \u201COpt out\u201D option has been found to reduce bias associated with such choices ( Fifer et al., 2014; Ladenburg & Olsen, 2014 ). Moreover, it is possible that farmers opted out because they expected funding from the Millennium Villages Project was unlikely to continue given the project\u2019s finite operational timeline.",
year = "2019",
month = dec,
doi = "10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104651",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "124",
journal = "World Development",
issn = "0305-750X",
publisher = "Elsevier BV",
}