Lenaerts Bert, de Mey Yann, Demont Matty
Centre for Environmental Sciences UHasselt Hasselt Belgium.
International Rice Research Institute Los Baños Philippines.
J Agric Econ. 2022 Feb;73(1):277-300. doi: 10.1111/1477-9552.12450. Epub 2021 Jul 4.
Adoption of new plant varieties has played a significant role in eradicating global hunger. Previous research has mainly focused on farmer adoption and impact of new crop varieties, although upstream adoption of technologies in plant breeding can generate substantial multiplier effects on downstream impacts. This study moves upstream in the innovation system to generate policy advice on adoption and transfer of accelerated rice breeding technologies. More specifically, we assess the determinants of global adoption of rapid generation advance (RGA) through a sample of 158 rice breeders operating in various research institutes worldwide. Moving upstream in the innovation system has important theoretical and empirical implications due to the smaller number of decision-making units in the adoption process and the increasing role of institutional and managerial factors that may overrule individual adoption motivations. We revisit multi-stage models and devise the most robust estimation method that can be used in this situation. To generate insights on the impact of individual versus institutional adopter characteristics on upstream technology adoption, we juxtapose the response curves of the determinants of RGA adoption in rice breeding among alternative adoption stages, levels of conditionality and model specifications. Our findings confirm the importance of institutional and managerial factors and suggest that adoption and transfer of breeding technologies require breeding institutes to provide an enabling environment in which breeders are encouraged to take risks and are given sufficient freedom to experiment with and implement new technologies.
采用新植物品种在消除全球饥饿方面发挥了重要作用。以往的研究主要集中在农民对新作物品种的采用及其影响，尽管植物育种技术的上游采用能够对下游影响产生巨大的乘数效应。本研究在创新体系中向上游推进，以生成关于加速水稻育种技术采用和转让的政策建议。更具体地说，我们通过对全球各研究机构中158名水稻育种者的抽样，评估全球采用快速世代推进（RGA）的决定因素。在创新体系中向上游推进具有重要的理论和实证意义，这是因为采用过程中的决策单位数量较少，而且机构和管理因素的作用日益增强，这些因素可能会压倒个人的采用动机。我们重新审视多阶段模型，并设计出可用于这种情况的最稳健估计方法。为了深入了解个体与机构采用者特征对上游技术采用的影响，我们将水稻育种中RGA采用决定因素在不同采用阶段、条件水平和模型规格下的响应曲线并列比较。我们的研究结果证实了机构和管理因素的重要性，并表明育种技术的采用和转让要求育种机构提供一个有利环境，鼓励育种者承担风险，并给予他们足够的自由来试验和实施新技术。
