Farmer personality and community-based extension effectiveness in Tanzania

Community-based extension relies on social relationships with farmers to increase the trust in and effectiveness of extension activities. Personality traits play an important role in social outcomes. We develop a conceptual model which shows that farmer personality can influence the likelihood of being aware of and incorporating information from community-based extension activities. We then examine this heterogeneity empirically leveraging a previously implemented randomized control trial and a dataset of Big Six personality traits (agency, agreeableness, openness to experience, neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) for bean farmers in the Mbeya Region of Tanzania. We find that more extraverted farmers residing in villages where community extension agents were randomly selected to distribute trial packs of improved bean seed along with a demonstration plot comparison (rather than a demonstration plot comparison alone) were more likely to adopt the improved bean varieties. These farmers were also more likely to discuss bean farming with a larger proportion of farmers in their villages, indicating that the benefits of the trial pack treatment may have been greater for more sociable farmers. Our findings suggest that community-based extension effectiveness may be increased by considering the role of personality in the quality and quantity of farmers’ interactions within their communities.