Can targeting information to network-central farmers induce more adoption of a new agricultural technology? By combining social network data and a field experiment in 200 villages in Malawi, we find that targeting central farmers is important to spur the diffusion process. We also provide evidence of one explanation for why centrality matters: a diffusion process governed by complex contagion. Our results are consistent with a model in which many farmers need to learn from multiple people before they adopt themselves. This means that without proper targeting of information, the diffusion process can stall and technology adoption remains perpetually low.
Even with comparable innate ability and performance, women may be subject to discrimination. We run a field experiment across 143 Malawian villages in which either men or women were assigned the task of learning about a new agricultural technology, and then communicating it to others to convince them to adopt. Objective measures of these communicators’ knowledge and adoption of the new technology show no gender gap in their ability to acquire, retain and use the information. Yet, micro-data on individual interactions from 6500 farmers show that other farmers are less willing to learn from female communicators, whom they perceive not to be as good at farming as their male counterparts. In spite of this, other farmers learn just as much about the technology when the communicator role is reserved for women, and they experience similar farm yields.