Farmers’ preferences for varietal trait improvements: The case of rice farmers in Nueva Ecija, Philippines

Farmers have their own preferences for agricultural technology attributes, which have been found to significantly influence adoption decisions. However, these are not always known nor do they always match with the objectives of the researchers. To understand farmers’ preferences for rice varietal trait improvements (VTIs), we conducted a framed field experiment. The experiment provided the farmers the opportunity to participate early in rice breeding research by expressing their need for trait improvements. In the experiment, farmers were given an endowment fund of 100 Philippine pesos and were asked to invest it among the VTIs they prefer and need using the Investment Game Application (IGA), a newly developed application for eliciting preferences. Farmers were sampled from randomly selected villages in three municipalities in Nueva Ecija, a major rice producing province in the Philippines. In total, 122 households joined the experiment, with both husband and wife participating. We use the fractional multinomial logit model to examine the relationship of the proportion invested to VTIs with various factors that may influence farmers’ preferences. Results indicate that market and climate change information, wet season cropping, hybrid varieties, and farm size are among the factors that influence farmers to invest in trait improvements. Moreover, results of the gender-specific analysis indicate that there are differences in the factors that influence husband and wife in investing in trait improvements. Overall, information from this study can assist breeders in their efforts to make rice breeding more resource efficient and client-oriented, which could help facilitate the adoption of new and improved varieties.