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- Title
- Information, knowledge, and demand for substitute health inputs : experimental evidence of pesticide use in Zambia
- Creator
- Goeb, Joseph Christopher
- Date
- 2017
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
ABSTRACTINFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, AND DEMAND FOR SUBSTITUTE HEALTH INPUTS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF PESTICIDE USE IN ZAMBIAByJoseph Christopher GoebMany goods carry health risks that have important impacts on demand and behavior. However, the risks are rarely transparent and, as a result, consumers often have incomplete knowledge of the health risks associated with many of their consumption decisions. This can lead to inefficient behavior. With that in mind, economists have studied the impacts...
Show moreABSTRACTINFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, AND DEMAND FOR SUBSTITUTE HEALTH INPUTS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF PESTICIDE USE IN ZAMBIAByJoseph Christopher GoebMany goods carry health risks that have important impacts on demand and behavior. However, the risks are rarely transparent and, as a result, consumers often have incomplete knowledge of the health risks associated with many of their consumption decisions. This can lead to inefficient behavior. With that in mind, economists have studied the impacts of risk information on consumer behavior, though the effects are rarely straightforward as there may be risk compensation and substitution effects across inputs and behaviors. This dissertation tests the effects of information on knowledge and demand for two substitute health inputs using a randomized control trial of pesticide users in rural Zambia.Essay 1 contributes to the broader literature on information, knowledge, and preventative health demands, and to the pesticide safety literature by presenting the first randomly controlled test of the impacts of pesticide safety information on willingness-to-pay (WTP) for personal protective equipment (PPE) measured using two Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanisms. Despite knowledge improvements from the training, overall effects on demand for PPE were insignificant. We also find that demand for both gloves and masks is highly elastic near their market prices.Essay 2 shows that information significantly changed pesticide choices, which were assessed using stated choice experiments and actual purchase decisions before and after the information intervention. We find that farmers held an erroneous positive price-quality perception for pesticides prior to receiving information, and that information effectively broke that perception. Importantly for health, farmers chose less toxic pesticides more often after receiving information on relative toxicities and health risks. Essay 3 presents a detailed assessment of farmer pesticide knowledge using 22 questions covering pesticide control properties and health risks. We find that Zambian tomato farmers generally know pesticides are harmful to their health, but they lack product-specific knowledge on pesticide toxicity and pesticide control properties. The training program caused an increase in overall pesticide knowledge with large increases in toxicity knowledge, pest control knowledge, and pesticide efficacy knowledge. The effects of information on protective equipment knowledge were insignificant.
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- Title
- Impacts of government maize supports on smallholder cotton production in Zambia
- Creator
- Goeb, Joseph Christopher
- Date
- 2011
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
IMPACTS OF GOVERNMENT MAIZE SUPPORTS ONSMALLHOLDER COTTON PRODUCTION IN ZAMBIAByJoseph Christopher Goeb In Zambia, cotton has been an agricultural success story led by private cotton ginneries and smallholder production. Since liberalization in 1994, the cotton sector has seen periods of dramatic growth and two severe crashes. Production recovered well after the crash in 2000, but recovery since 2007 has not been as strong. The Zambian government has drastically increased its supports to...
Show moreIMPACTS OF GOVERNMENT MAIZE SUPPORTS ONSMALLHOLDER COTTON PRODUCTION IN ZAMBIAByJoseph Christopher Goeb In Zambia, cotton has been an agricultural success story led by private cotton ginneries and smallholder production. Since liberalization in 1994, the cotton sector has seen periods of dramatic growth and two severe crashes. Production recovered well after the crash in 2000, but recovery since 2007 has not been as strong. The Zambian government has drastically increased its supports to smallholder production of maize since the 2005 harvest year through maize purchases by the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) and subsidized fertilizer targeted to maize through the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP). Because cotton is almost entirely produced in the country's main "maize belt", these maize supports in principle also affect the relative profitability of cotton, but any effects directly on smallholder cotton cropping decisions are largely unknown. This thesis attempts to move towards understanding the effects of the FRA and FISP maize supports on smallholder cotton production in Zambia. Two separate Cragg hurdle models are employed to determine the effects of the maize supports on i) smallholders' decisions whether to plant cotton, and ii) their land allocation decisions to cotton given that they decided to plant it. We also track household cotton planting decisions over a ten year period and analyze across several household indicators.
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