The Demand for Advice - Theory and Empirical Evidence from Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Jul 19, 2026

Uploaded by Maeve

Low levels of investment in modern technologies and underuse of low-monetary-cost measures with high potential yields often hinder agricultural development. This paper examines farmers’ demand for agricultural advisory services, which typically carry little direct user cost yet can substantially raise yields. The analysis proposes costly attention as an explanation: advisory benefits require farmers to allocate attention to listening and implementing advice. A rational inattention model identifies conditions under which farmers optimally abstain, and the resulting predictions align with farm-level panel evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Agricultural productivity gaps and adoption puzzles

Agricultural advisory services and observed low demand

The paper’s rational inattention approach

Attention as a scarce resource

When farmers abstain from demanding advice

Pub lic Disclosure Authorized Pub lic Disclosure Authorized The World Bank Economic Review, 36(1), 2022, 91–113 [https://doi.org10.1093/wber/lhab001](https://doi.org10.1093/wber/lhab001) Article The Demand for Advice: Theory and Empirical Evidence from Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa * Dominik Naeher and Matthias Schündeln Abstract Low levels of investment into modern technologies, and limited use of measures that have low monetary cost but the potential for high yields, are often regarded as obstacles to further agricultural development. This paper investigates farmers’ demand for one such measure, namely agricultural advisory services. These have modest (most frequently zero) monetary user cost but, according to some recent research, have the potential to result in large increases of yields. Yet demand for these extension services is often low. We propose that costly attention may be part of the explanation for this. In our model, advisory services are available free of charge, but positive effects on production are only realized if farmers devote attention to listening to and implementing the provided advice. Modeling farmers as rational decision makers facing scarce attention, we identify the circumstances under which farmers may optimally abstain from demanding advisory services. The model complements the insights of other theories commonly used to explain suboptimal farm decisions and outcomes, and generates testable predictions, which are consistent with empirical evidence based on a large farm-level panel dataset from Sub-Saharan Africa. JEL classification: D91, O13, Q16 Keywords: economic development, advice, agricultural extension, rational inattention, Sub-Saharan Africa 1. Introduction Increases in productivity are key to growth and poverty reduction, yet productivity in many domains is lagging far behind technological possibilities. This is particularly true for agricultural productivity in many parts of the developing world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (Jama and Pizarro 2008; World Bank 2008) . One puzzling observation is that farmers do not make use of measures that have relatively low costs but are believed to offer high returns. In particular, modern farm inputs, such as fertilizer and improved seeds, have been demonstrated in a variety of contexts to have significant expected returns, yet are frequently not adopted and, conditional on adoption, inputs are used in suboptimal amounts. * Dominik Naeher (corresponding author) is an assistant professor at University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; his email address is [dominik.naeher@ucd.ie. Matthias](dominik.naeher@ucd.ie. Matthias) Schündeln is a professor at Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany; his email address is schuendeln@wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de. The authors thank the editor Eric Edmonds, anonymous referees, and Mirko Wiederholt for extensive comments and suggestions, and Sandro Ambuehl, Luc Christiaensen, Rema Hanna, and Sara Savastano for helpful discussions. A supplementary online appendix is available with this article at the World Bank Economic Review website. © The Author(s) 2021 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Downloaded from [https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/36/1/91/6141256 by LEGVP Law Library user on 08 December 2023](https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/36/1/91/6141256 by LEGVP Law Library user on 08 December 2023) To help farmers overcome the underlying constraints, a major policy instrument used is the provision of agricultural extension and advisory services.1 A growing body of em

FAQs

Why do farmers often show low demand for agricultural advisory services despite potential benefits?

The paper argues that receiving advice is linked to realizing production effects only when farmers devote attention to listening and implementing it, and attention can be costly and scarce.

How does the model describe farmers’ decision-making regarding advisory services?

Farmers are modeled as rational decision makers facing limited attention capacity, so they request extension services only when the attention they are willing to allocate makes participation worthwhile.

What evidence supports the paper’s theoretical predictions?

Predictions from the rational inattention model are consistent with empirical evidence using a large farm-level panel dataset from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Jul 19, 2026

Uploaded by Maeve