Difference-in-differences econometric assessment of mobile extension services on productivity growth and technical change patterns

Abstract

Despite theoretical assertions that mobile extension services enhance farmer knowledge accessibility, improve decision-making capacity, and facilitate cost-effective outreach, rigorous empirical evidence quantifying actual productivity impacts and technical efficiency gains remains critically limited, particularly within developing agricultural systems. This research utilised a difference-in-differences (DiD) econometric methodology to evaluate the effects of mobile extension services on the growth of agricultural productivity and the patterns of technical change among smallholder farmers. The analysis, which used panel data from 1,248 rice farmers in three agro-ecological zones over four years (2020–2023), shows that mobile extension interventions led to big gains in productivity. The treatment group, which included 624 farmers who used mobile extension services, showed a 23.7% rise in technical efficiency. The control group, on the other hand, only showed an 8.2% rise. The annual rate of technical change for mobile extension services was 0.31, which is much higher than the 0.12 rate for traditional extension systems. The stochastic frontier analysis showed that mobile extension cut down on technical inefficiency by 34% (p<0.01) and raised total factor productivity by 18.6%. Farm-specific efficiency scores went from 0.42 to 0.96. The average efficiency for people 
who got mobile extension was 0.78, while the average efficiency for people who didn't get it was 0.64. The research substantiates that mobile extension services markedly improved both allocative and technical efficiency, exhibiting more pronounced effects in irrigated systems (β=0.284, p<0.01) compared to rain-fed agriculture (β=0.189, p<0.05). These results indicate that digital agricultural extension may act as a catalyst for sustainable agricultural transformation in developing nations