Incentivizing Social Learning for the Diffusion of Climate-Smart Agricultural Techniques

Unsustainable land use is a key threat to both economic development and environmentalconservation in developing countries. This study implemented a randomized controlled trial in arid Burkina Faso to testthe effectiveness of financial incentives in stimulating the adoption of sustainable land management practices (SLMPs).It did so in the context of a so-called cascade training program, in which some farmers were trained in theimplementation of sustainable land management practices, who were then asked to disseminate their newly acquiredknowledge and expertise to other farmers in their social networks. The study finds that offering payments conditionalon adoption improves both the transfer of information from the trained to the peer farmers, as well as the peerfarmers' sustainable land management practices adoption rates. Offering financial incentives thus mitigates two ofthe most important barriers to the adoption of sustainable land management practices – the (perceived) lack of privatebenefits and insufficient diffusion of the technical implementation information from the trained farmers to theirpeers. Finally, the study documents that adoption of sustainable land management practices generates substantialincreases in crop productivity and agricultural income already after one agricultural cycle.