Scarcity and Enabling Adoption and Sustained Use of New Technologies

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Adoption of new technologies that would be beneficial to developing and rural communities is not just a matter of improved materials and technology. Benefits cannot be realized without sufficiently-wide adoption and sustained use. However, successful introduction and continued use remain a significant challenge in development efforts across all kinds of interventions. Our project addresses the problems of introducing beneficial new technologies; in particular, our goal is to determine the effect of a "hard to get" strategy on adoption and usage. We will compare novel allocation procedures for introducing improved technologies. Our comparison will include laboratory experiments in advance to inform the design of our randomized controlled trial (RCT). We expect that our laboratory experiments will help in designing the RCT that will be conducted in a set of villages--with an introduction of new technology via limited availability (i.e., scarce supply)--will have increased desirability, uptake rates, adoption, and sustained use. This project assessing methods of scale-up to sustainability will serve as a pilot for a larger-scale implementation. The current proposal is for conducting a proof of concept laboratory experiments for a 'hard to get design.' We will be comparing methods of scale-up to sustainability: traditional all-at-once distribution versus slow rollout based on need, thereby creating scarcity and presumably increasing interest and demand for a new technology. Before rolling out the large field experiments, we will pilot some of the behavioral mechanisms in lab experiments. The goal of the laboratory experiments is to pilot with different variations of the basic idea of scarcity, trying to better understand the psychology and refine the method before implementing it in the field.