Farmers’ willingness to pay for hermetic storage bags: The effects of training and free trial
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Stored Products Research
Abstract
Maize is a staple food for smallholder farmers in Africa, but poor postharvest management leads to high grain
losses, contributing to food insecurity. Improved on-farm storage such as hermetic storage bags can reduce these
losses, yet their adoption remains low. Full one-off subsidies can be an effective development policy to enhance
technology adoption. However, policymakers are often opposed to such subsidies, arguing that it lowers will
ingness to pay (WTP) once the subsidy ends and thereby constrains the future market. Using the Becker-DeGroot-
Marschak (BDM) mechanism to investigate WTP and building on a prior randomized control trial among
smallholders in Tanzania, this study analyzes how prior free distribution influences long-term WTP for hermetic
storage bags (six years later). Additionally, we analyze how offering a deferred payment option influences
farmers’ WTP for hermetic storage bags. We find that the prior provision of free hermetic storage bags had
decreased WTP. As an alternative intervention, we show that providing the opportunity to pay later increases
WTP as compared to immediate payment. The study highlights that free technology provision may reduce future
market engagement but a pay later option can be considered as a valuable policy tool for quick technology
dissemination.
Description
Journal article
Keywords
Technology adoption, BDM, Free hermetic bags provision, Hermetic bag, WTP