Assessing the Relationship Between Property Rights and Technology Adoption in Smallholder Agriculture: A Review of Issues and Empirical Methods

Studies of the relationships between property rights and technology adoption are complicated in several respects. First, there are challenges involved in defining and measuring property rights and tenure security. Second, there are several different valid purposes for undertaking such studies and each purpose may require a different approach. Third, there are a number of difficult theoretical and empirical issues involved in such studies, particularly in defining technology, identifying key dimensions of property rights, and accounting for the endogeneous determination of property rights. Through a synthesis and evaluation of previous studies, this paper identifies key issues and develops guidelines for conducting research on the relationships between property rights and technology adoption in smallholder agriculture. It seeks to benefit researchers and policy makers wishing to undertake or interpret empirical research. The topics addressed in the paper are: definition of scope and terms; key issues pertaining to the relationships between technology adoption and property rights variables; data collection and measurement issues; and analyses and interpretation of findings. The primary target groups for this paper are researchers and policy analysts.