The Impact of Indigenous People’s Pre-existing Information on Rice Farming: Findings from Laos

Abstract

Dissemination of information can enhance smallholder farmers’ agricultural outcomes and incomes in developing countries. However, the impact evaluation for new information can be inaccurate without considering pre-existing information that the indigenous people have used. This study explores qualitative causal links between existing agricultural information used by Lao smallholder farmers on rice yield and selling price with 180 household data. We categorized the pre-existing information into weather, farming technique, input, intermediate trader, and sales price. The source of each piece of information is used as an instrumental variable to overcome the endogeneity issue between information use and agricultural outcomes. Using farming technique information positively affects rice yields by 57.1% compared to those without that information. Moreover, intermediate trader and crop sales information result in 64.5% and 60.0% higher selling prices than non-user groups. A statistically significant causal relationship exists with agricultural outcomes. The more genuine impact should be measured with a newly updated impact evaluation approach that considers this preexisting agricultural information.