Risk Preferences and Trust as Determinants of Technology Adoption Among Kyrgyz Farming Households

Agriculture is central to the Kyrgyz economy, yet technology adoption lags, and existing models overlook trust and risk preferences, particularly their interaction. Moreover, no prior Kyrgyz study has addressed this gap. Hence, this research examines how risk attitudes and trust shape technology adoption among Kyrgyz farming households, using two waves (2016, 2019) of the Life in Kyrgyzstan panel survey restricted to farming households, yielding balanced panel data of 1,305 households with 3,298 observations. Using household fixed-effects regression, preliminary results show that risk preference alone is not a significant variable, while its interaction with trust reveals that risk-tolerant farmers adopt more when they have institutional trust or are cautious. It has also been observed that different types of trust have distinct direct effects on farmers' technology adoption. For instance, wariness predicts higher adoption, while institutional trust suggests lower adoption. These findings are crucial for Kyrgyzstan’s current push toward modern, particularly green and resource-efficient, approaches aimed at limiting environmental damage while improving resource management in farmers’ practices. Investments pay off only if farmers actually adopt technologies. Therefore, to maximize the returns from these investments, it is important to design trust- and risk-sensitive policy for Kyrgyzstan.