Improving Soil Health Card Comprehension and Trust with Supplemental Explanations
INDIND -17 -3289-
Abstract
Governments in India have invested heavily in soil testing, with the goal of distributing 140 million “Soil Health Cards” (SHCs) directly to farmers in 2017. Yet absent additional information, farmers may have difficulty understanding and acting on the information provided in SHCs. In a field experiment with cotton farmers in Gujarat, we tested farmer understanding when provided with an SHC with no supplement against understanding when provided with an audio supplement, a video supplement, or an in-person explanation with an agronomist. We find that the treatments significantly improved farmer understanding of SHCs as well as trust. All three treatments dramatically improve participants’ ability to interpret fertilizer recommendations from the SHC, with between 36 and 50 percentage points higher comprehension among treated individuals. Farmers in each of the three treatment groups are also more likely to report trusting recommendations compared to those in the SHC-only group.
The primary contribution of this study is to evaluate the prospects for digital advisory to assist in the delivery of information about site-specific agricultural practices. When benchmarked against in-person extension, audio and video supplements perform comparably both in terms of enabling comprehension of SHC recommendations and eliciting trust in their accuracy. They perform significantly better on both measures than just providing a farmer with an SHC. -
Status
Completed
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Start date
Q1 Jan 2017
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Experiment Location
India / Gujarat, India
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Partner Organization
_N/A
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Agricultural season
_N/A
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Experiment type
Impact Evaluation
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Sample frame / target population
Cotton farmers in two blocks of Gujarat where the Krishi Tarang service is operational
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Sample size
600
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Outcome type
Beliefs or perceptions, Knowledge
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Mode of data collection
In-person survey
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Research question(s)
1. Do supplemental explanations (audio, video, in-person) improve farmers’ understanding of SHCs?
2. How do the different modes of explanation compare in improving SHC understanding?
3. Do supplemental explanations improve farmers’ trust in SHCs?
4. How do different modes of explanation compare in improving SHC trust?
5. Is farmer trust in SHCs influenced by whether the SHC recommended higher or lower fertilizer use than is typically practiced by farmers in the area? -
Research theme
Input recommendations, Service design, Soil fertility
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Research Design
PxD has operated the Krishi Tarang service in Gujarat since 2016 to provide free agriculture information via mobile phones using a two-way Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform with “outbound” push calls and an “inbound” hotline service.
Across 12 villages in two blocks of Gujarat where the Krishi Tarang service was operational, we selected approximately 600 farmers to be assigned at random to one of four conditions in which farmers received:
- Control (C): an SHC only
- Treatment 1 (T1): an SHC along with an audio recording
- Treatment 2 (T2): an SHC along with a video clip
- Treatment 3 (T3): an SHC along with an agronomist visit
We also randomly varied whether the results of the SHC recommended higher fertilizer use than is typically practiced by farmers in the area or lower fertilizer use than is typically practiced. Each set of recommendations was plausible, given the soil composition in the area. This was done to understand whether trust in information is driven by a bias towards believing that more fertilizers are always better than less. Half of the participants in groups T1, T2, T3, and C each received one type of SHC (high/low). Farmers in groups T1-T3 were also provided a written supplement converting fertilizer recommendations from kg/hectare as in the soil card to kg/bigha (the common unit of area used in this setting).
We first assessed farmer beliefs without providing any soil nutrient information, by asking the farmer to provide fertilizer recommendations to a hypothetical friend or cousin cultivating irrigated cotton. Second, each farmer was shown an SHC and asked to answer (i) factual questions about specific urea, DAP, and MOP recommendations contained therein, and (ii) opinion questions gauging their perception of the trustworthiness of these recommendations. Finally, as per the assignment, the SHC’s recommendations were also explained through an audio recording, video clip, or agronomist visit. Farmers were then asked to answer these questions again. At this time, they were also asked other questions regarding their knowledge of soil fertility, trust in recommendations under different scenarios, and willingness to participate in lotteries whereby, if chosen, they would have to pay Rs.250 (or Rs.200, or Rs.150) to have a soil test worth Rs.250 performed for their field.
For more information see Cole and Sharma (2017).
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Results
We find that the treatments significantly improved farmer understanding of SHCs as well as trust. All three treatments dramatically improve participants’ ability to interpret fertilizer recommendations from the SHC, with between 36 and 50 percentage points higher comprehension among treated individuals. Of the three treatments, gains are found as being highest in the agronomist intervention, followed closely by video and audio. We find that farmers in each of the three treatment groups are more likely to report trusting recommendations compared to those in the SHC-only group. Farmers visited by an agronomist are 11.1 percentage points more likely than the SHC-only group to report fully trusting recommendations in the SHC, and those who received the audio or video treatment are 5-7 percentage points more likely to report fully trusting recommendations. We cannot detect a difference in trust between recipients of low-recommendation and high-recommendation soil health cards.