Analyzing Farmers’ Behavior in the Adoption of Paid Digital Extension Service: Experimental Evidence of Rice Advice in Nigeria

Adopting digital extension technologies by smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly in Africa, is challenging due to various barriers, such as lack of infrastructure, farmers’ low e-literary, and limited access to technology. Our study addresses farmers’ attitudes toward the adoption of new technological approaches to bypass these barriers. We investigated how farmers perceive the paid extension approach and the usefulness of the services proposed. We employed an experimental design conducted in Jigawa and Kano states in Nigeria with a total sample size of 1560 rice farmers selected through a multistage stratified sampling approach. Three distinct paid extension services were randomly assigned to farmers grouped separately as a treatment and a control group. We first subjected the data to reliability, validity, and consistency tests using Cronbach’s Alpha method to test the reliability and then applied the Partial-least Square Structural Equation Modeling method to analyze the data. Depending on the service, there are notable differences in the impact of “perceived usefulness” and “perceived ease of use” on “attitude,” “adoption,” and “actual use” on farmers’ decisions. However, we found that a solid and favorable perception exists of farmers using paid digital extension services. Furthermore, our evidence suggests that price options and payment methods positively influence farmers’ decisions to accept the assigned extension service. Our study contributes foremost to the empirical literature on farmers’ behavior in adopting paid extension services and how much farmers might pay for the proposed service.