Information interventions and willingness to pay for PICS bags: Evidence from Sierra Leone

IF 6.8 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY Food Policy Pub Date : 2024-11-01 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102760

Jingru Jia, Paul E. McNamara

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Abstract

This study investigates the different impact of informational interventions on smallholder farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags in Sierra Leone. Despite the proven efficacy of PICS bags in reducing post-harvest losses and maintaining crop quality, their adoption rates remain extremely low in Sierra Leone. Through a field experiment with random assignment involving 436 households, this research investigates how health and profit-oriented information impacts farmers’ valuation of PICS bags. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: receiving health benefits information, receiving profit benefits information, or a control group receiving standard usage instructions. Both treatment groups also received the standard usage instructions provided to the control group. The WTP was assessed using the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) auction method. Results indicate that while profit-related information significantly increases WTP, health information does not. Additionally, this study explores heterogeneity in treatment effects, finding that there is no significant variation in response across different demographic and socioeconomic groups, pointing to a potential uniformity in the effectiveness of the informational interventions.

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信息干预和对 PICS 袋的支付意愿：塞拉利昂的证据

本研究调查了信息干预对塞拉利昂小农购买普渡改进型农作物储藏（PICS）袋的支付意愿（WTP）的不同影响。尽管 PICS 袋在减少收获后损失和保持作物质量方面的功效已得到证实，但其在塞拉利昂的采用率仍然极低。本研究通过一项涉及 436 户家庭的随机分配实地实验，调查了健康和利润导向信息如何影响农民对 PICS 袋的评价。参与者被随机分配到三组中的一组：接受健康益处信息组、接受利润益处信息组或接受标准使用说明的对照组。两个处理组也都接受了提供给对照组的标准使用说明。WTP 采用 Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) 拍卖法进行评估。结果表明，与利润相关的信息能显著提高 WTP，而健康信息则不能。此外，本研究还探讨了治疗效果的异质性，发现不同人口和社会经济群体的反应没有明显差异，这表明信息干预的效果可能是一致的。

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来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.