Farmer’s age, technology adoption, and income: a case of the elderly-friendly technology in South Korea

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of farmers’ age on the adoption of new agricultural technology and farm household income for the case of elderly-friendly new technology. Considering the endoge-neity of technology adoption, a two-stage estimation method was applied. Empirical analysis was conducted using the survey data of 265 strawberry farmers in South Korea. The empirical results confirm the significant income effect of technology adoption of farmers, but no income effect of farmers’ age once controlled for technology adoption. Farmers’ age also does not reduce the proba-bility of adopting new technology when controlled for the differences in technology acceptability, whereas farmers’ technology acceptability significantly raises the probability of technology adoption. Put differently, it is not farmers’ age but their technology acceptability level that determines the adoption of new technology and subsequently farm household income, at least in the case of eld-erly-friendly technology. It thus suggests that, facing the rapidly aging rural sectors, measures need to be taken to promote the development of elderly-friendly technology and enhance farmers’ technol-ogy acceptability level so that they are apt enough to adopt newly developed technology. Further research is called for to investigate whether this age-technology acceptability-technology adoption nexus holds for non-elderly-friendly technology.