Abstract:
Rice has been identified as an important food security crop in Ghana. However,
there is a production deficit and new technologies to reduce the deficit are not
widely adopted. Although poor adoption by farmers’ is often linked to constraints
such as access to information, farmers’ perceptions of the technologies are also
important. We apply an advanced discrete choice experiment to evaluate farmers’
preferences for rice production practices. Specifically, we generate willingness to
pay (WTP) estimates using willingness to pay space (WS) and compare these
with values from the indirect or preference space (PS) method. Our modelling also
accounts for the effects on WTP estimates of farmers’ stated attribute importance
(SAI) information. Empirical results from WS and PS models reveal that on average, farmers value higher yields and are negatively affected by higher risk of crop
failure and labour requirements. Comparing the performance of the two models,
we find the WS model provides a superior fit to our data and reduces the likelihood
of producing implausible WTP estimates. Further, SAI inclusion did not produce
much variation in our WTP estimates.
