Incentivized interventions improve willingness to adopt edible insects farming for household consumption: Experimental evidence from Kenya

Farming edible insects for household consumption is a novel and sustainable way of promoting nutritious food with low environmental footprint. However, the adoption of edible insect farming, such as cricket farming, remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding willingness to adopt is critical, as it helps determine and predict adoption behavior. Incentivized interventions are important for promoting the adoption of new and underutilized agricultural technologies. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of such interventions on willingness to adopt cricket farming for household consumption. Specifically, we employ randomized control trial (RCT) design to assess the impact of incentivized interventions on willingness to adopt cricket farming in western Kenya. The RCT randomly assigned 99 villages, comprising 2046 households, to two treatment arms and a control group. We find that educational training on cricket farming, including practical demonstration, significantly increased willingness to adopt by 12 percentage points compared to a control group mean of 0.61. Further, results reveal that bundling this intervention with nutrition education and insect cooking demonstrations increased willingness to adopt by 10 percentage points compared to the same control group mean. Nevertheless, the difference between the two interventions remain statistically insignificant. These results suggest that providing low-cost material incentives, complemented by insect farming and nutrition education training with practical demonstrations, can be effective in increasing adoption among smallholder farmers, hence potentially enhancing household welfare. This study adds new knowledge to the literature on insect farming promotion for household consumption and agricultural technology adoption more generally.