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Spousal decision-making and agricultural investments: The relation between information asymmetries, risk preferences and investments in agricultural intensification in rural Uganda

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Title Spousal decision-making and agricultural investments: The relation between information asymmetries, risk preferences and investments in agricultural intensification in rural Uganda
 
Creator Schenkel, Leonie
 
Subject decision making
agriculture
food security
climate change
investment
risk
intensification
 
Description Agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers in Uganda is low, and only a small amount of farmers apply new technologies. The decision to adopt new techniques is made within the agrarian household, and therefore it is crucial to better understand intra-household decision-making processes. Inefficient household outcomes are partly due to limited cooperation within households. We use information asymmetry as a proxy for non-cooperative behaviour within the household. We study the relation between spousal information asymmetry levels and investments in more efficient agricultural production through the adoption of intensification practices, as measured in a survey with spouses in Northern and Western Uganda. While we expect to see a negative relation between information asymmetry and households’ investments, we did not find significant results. Besides information asymmetry, risk preferences play a major role in the adoption decision. Individuals have their own levels of risk aversion that potentially differ between spouses. We wanted to understand whose preference is decisive within the spousal bargaining process and tested the relation between investments in agricultural intensification and risk preferences, as measured in a Holt-Laury lottery. We hypothesised that the husband’s preference is taken more into account in the investment decision, and that risk aversion negatively relates to investments in agricultural intensification. Results did not show significance when measuring spousal categories with four risk categories, and did not show significance for husband’s preferences using round of switching as risk preference indicator. This last indicator, however, showed significance between wives’ switch round and husbands’ reported levels of investments in agricultural intensification, p
 
Date 2020-10-17
2021-01-05T14:37:16Z
2021-01-05T14:37:16Z
 
Type Thesis
 
Identifier Schenkel L. 2020. Spousal decision-making and agricultural investments: The relation between information asymmetries, risk preferences and investments in agricultural intensification in rural Uganda. Master Thesis Development Economics (Wageningen University and Research, Department of Social Sciences), 69 p.
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/110709
PII-EA_GCP4Maize
 
Language en
 
Rights Other
Open Access
 
Format 69 p.
application/pdf