Technology Exposure and Adoption Over Time: Lessons From Bt Eggplant in Bangladesh

Abstract

Adoption of improved crop varieties fuels agricultural productivity, but the impact of their adoption over time remains unexplored. Building on a randomized experiment fielded in 2017, we explore the long-term adoption and impacts of a successful intervention with a genetically modified eggplant variety (Bt eggplant) in Bangladesh. We study the extent to which households exposed through this intervention to Bt eggplant continued to grow it after 5 years, and whether exposure to the improved variety had post-intervention impacts on a battery of eggplant-, agricultural-, economic-, and women's empowerment-specific outcomes. We find wide-scale dis-adoption of the Bt eggplant technology, driven primarily by difficulties in accessing seed as well as the absence of post-intervention support by extension specialists and implementors. Notably, we observe a change in seed-sourcing behavior in households exposed to Bt eggplant, with a shift towards the formal seed sector. We see no other effects on a variety of eggplant- and agriculture-related outcomes. We find no evidence that exposure to Bt eggplant at the household level had any positive or negative impact on dimensions of women's empowerment. This study is the first to demonstrate empirically that if delivery strategies and support structures are not sustained, short-term benefits alone are not sufficient to guarantee long-term adoption of improved varieties.