Smallholder farmers’ adoption of productivity-increasing technologies in Ethiopia: The role of user-centric bundling

It is widely acknowledged that to improve productivity and food security in Africa, the adoption of productivity-increasing technologies by smallholders should increase. To this regard, there is a rich literature exploring smallholder farmers’ adoption of productivity-increasing technologies such as improved seed varieties, fertilizers and farming practices. While the literature shows improvements in technology adoption by smallholders over the last decades, it also indicates a high heterogeneity in adoption patterns, for example between communities and regions, that cannot be explained with current state of the art knowledge on smallholder adoption. This thesis aims to deepen our understanding of smallholders’ adoption of productivity-increasing technologies by taking a user-centric perspective in Ethiopia. Building on marketing and consumer adoption literature, this thesis (a) explores and identifies the potential barriers that influence smallholders’ adoption process of productivity-increasing technologies and in which ways, (b) investigates the impact of user experiences on their adoption decisions, (c) explores the potential of product and service bundling to increase adoption rates of productivity-increasing technologies among smallholders, and (d) tests the effect of product and service bundling on adoption rates of productivity-increasing technologies among smallholders.