Private sector promotion of agricultural technologies: Experimental evidence from Nigeria

IF 5.5 3区经济学 Q1 BUSINESS

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Pub Date : 2025-06-27 DOI:10.1016/j.jeem.2025.103201

Lenis Saweda O Liverpool-Tasie , Andrew Dillon , Jeffrey R. Bloem , Guigonan Serge Adjognon

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Abstract

Private sector agricultural businesses are critical for scaling new and potentially environmentally-friendly technologies, though much attention has focused on public agricultural investment. Working with a private firm, we conduct an experiment testing the effectiveness of alternative marketing strategies for promoting the adoption of urea super granule fertilizer (USG) among rice farmers in Nigeria. We disentangle the effects of price discount vouchers and the firm’s standard marketing package. We find that the firm’s standard marketing increases the adoption of USG fertilizer by 24 percentage points while reducing prilled urea utilization by 17 percentage points. Discount vouchers increase adoption of USG by an additional eight percentage points, but are not profitable for the firm. Although the adoption of USG leads to substantial environmental benefits by reducing nitrogen loss, farmer rice yields did not increase. Thus, despite the potential public benefits, private incentives facing firms and farmers are insufficient to drive scaling after a one-year intervention.

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私营部门促进农业技术：来自尼日利亚的实验证据

私营农业企业对于推广可能对环境友好的新技术至关重要，尽管公共农业投资已成为人们关注的焦点。我们与一家私营公司合作，开展了一项试验，测试尼日利亚稻农推广尿素超颗粒肥料（USG）的替代营销策略的有效性。我们将价格折扣券和公司标准营销方案的影响分开。我们发现，该公司的标准营销增加了USG肥料的采用24个百分点，同时减少了颗粒尿素的利用率17个百分点。折扣券使USG的采用率增加了8个百分点，但对公司来说并没有盈利。虽然USG的采用减少了氮素的损失，带来了可观的环境效益，但农民的水稻产量并没有增加。因此，尽管有潜在的公共利益，但企业和农民面临的私人激励不足以在一年的干预后推动规模扩大。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Multiple-

CiteScore

8.00

自引率

4.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management publishes theoretical and empirical papers devoted to specific natural resources and environmental issues. For consideration, papers should (1) contain a substantial element embodying the linkage between economic systems and environmental and natural resources systems or (2) be of substantial importance in understanding the management and/or social control of the economy in its relations with the natural environment. Although the general orientation of the journal is toward economics, interdisciplinary papers by researchers in other fields of interest to resource and environmental economists will be welcomed.