Cultural Diversity, Social Learning, and Agricultural Technology Adoption

This paper examines how cultural diversity in a population affects how farmers learn from one another during the process of technology adoption. The paper develops two models to study diversity in this context. It modifies an existing model from the literature to allow for cultural diversity. And it presents a game theoretic model in which technology adoption and network formation are determined simultaneously. Both models suggest that cultural diversity can hinder the adoption of a new agricultural technology and lower the long-term equilibrium level of use. The paper then goes on to perform a rough empirical analysis of how cultural diversity affects social learning by examining data on the use of HYV (high-yield varieties) rice in South India. The results of this analysis are inconclusive and point to the need for further research in this area.