Beyond Simple Exposure: Information Fidelity and the Persistence of Technology Valuation

While agricultural extension programs are critical for unlocking the welfare gains of new technologies, their long-run impact is ultimately governed by how well technical information survives and circulates after formal campaigns conclude. We investigate the long-run informational life cycle of a preventative agricultural technology (PICS bags) using a post-campaign cross-section in Sierra Leone. We document a durable willingness-to-pay premium among previously exposed farmers. This persistence is highly structured, scaling positively with the breadth of surviving exposure, the depth of specific technical recall, and active social reinforcement. However, we identify a critical friction within local diffusion: while informal farmer-to-farmer networks sustain broad awareness, they systematically degrade the fact-specific technical precision required to justify a premium valuation. By shifting farmers across an extensive-margin afford- ability threshold, persistent information effectively screens out subjective uncertainty, allowing price subsidies to target true liquidity constraints. These findings demonstrate that durable extension requires deliberate architecture to mitigate signal decay.