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The purpose of this paper is to quantify the benefits of contract farming (CF) on farmers’ income and adoption of food safety measures (FSMs) at the farm level. The paper also investigates the determinants of participation in CF.

The study is based on a survey of 600 tomato farmers from Nepal. Descriptive statistics, regression analysis (using instrumental variable) and propensity score matching have been used to accomplish the objectives of the study.

The study found that the CF ensures higher returns to farmers as well as higher adoption of FSMs at the farm level. The contract farmers earned about 38 per cent higher net returns and had 38 per cent higher adoption of FSM as compared to independent farmers. Caste, occupation, farm size and cropping intensity significantly affected farmers’ participation in CF.

The analysis based on cross-section data has limitations to consider unobserved farmer-level individual heterogeneity.

This study will provide an empirical base to promote CF in Nepal. The study will also contribute to bridge the gap in literature on the drivers of CF and its impact on smallholders’ income and compliance with FSM in Nepal.

This study investigates the impact of contract farming in onion, okra and pomegranate production on profits of smallholder farmers in India. It also investigates the determinants of farmers’ participation in contract farming. The study is based on a survey of 1,131 farmers from Maharashtra, India engaged in the cultivation of these three crops.

This study uses instrumental variable regressions and quasi-experimental methods to decipher the impact of contract farming.

The study reveals that contract farming ensures higher returns for smallholders, enables their access to high-end markets and brings in risk-sharing with protection during price fluctuations. Farm size and farmers’ risk perceptions are significantly associated with their participation in contract farming.

The study is based on cross-sectional data, which presents limitations on considering unobserved farmer-level individual heterogeneity.

The study shows that contracts highlight the functioning of the contractor/integrator on both the input and output sides of the market. By providing better-quality inputs on credit and at discounted prices and by providing training, the integrator helps small farmers meet international food safety and quality standards, a historically difficult challenge for smallholders in India.

Information is often available to consumers through their social networks. Focusing on dairy consumers in India, this paper aims to present evidence of peer effects in consumers’ attitudes towards various food safety attributes and food safety practices.

Unobserved individual heterogeneities are crucial confounders in the identification of social (endogenous) effects. The identification is based on exploiting within-consumer variation across different aspects of attitude (or practices) related to food safety.

This paper uses a novel identification strategy that allows for average effects across attributes and practices to be estimated. Using the strategy, though this paper cannot estimate endogenous effects in each attribute or practice, this paper is able to identify such effects averaged over attributes or practices.

Cross-sectional study, caste affiliation is not defined at the right level of granularity.

The results suggest that information campaigns aimed at creating awareness about food safety can have social multiplier effects, and this also translates into changes in the practices followed to mitigate food safety risks.

In health-related awareness and practices, there are well-established cases of multiplier effects. The most significant example of this is the Pulse Polio campaign in India, where an awareness drives through social multiplier effects had such a significant impact that in 2012 India was declared polio-free. Perhaps, a similar campaign in matters related to food safety could be very fruitful.

The methodology and the issue are unique. Little exists in assessing social networks in the context of food safety.

Despite the susceptibility of cotton crops to pest attacks in the Malwa Region of Indian Punjab, no crop insurance policy has been implemented there– not even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), which is a central scheme. Therefore, this paper attempts to gauge the likely impact of the PMFBY on Punjab cotton farmers and assess the changes needed for greater uptake and effectiveness of PMFBY.

The authors have conducted a primary survey to conduct this study. Initially, the authors compared the costs of cotton production with the returns in two scenarios (with and without insurance). Additionally, the authors have applied a logistic regression framework to examine the determinants of the willingness of farmers to participate in the crop insurance market.

The study finds that net returns of cotton crops are conventionally small and insufficient to cope with damages from crop failure. Yet, PMFBY will require some modifications in the premium rate and the level of indemnity for its greater uptake among Punjab cotton farmers. Additionally, using the logistic regression framework, the authors find that an increase in awareness about crop insurance and farmers' perceptions about their crop failure in the near future reduces the willingness of the farmers to participate in the crop insurance markets.

The present study looks for the viability of PMFBY in Indian Punjab for the cotton crop, which can also be extended to other crops.

Punjab could also use crop insurance to encourage diversification in agriculture. There is a need for special packages for diversified crops under any crop insurance policy. Crops susceptible to volatility due to climate-related factors should be identified and provided with a special insurance package.

There exist very scant studies that have discussed the viability of a central crop insurance scheme in the agricultural-rich state of India, i.e. Punjab. Moreover, they do not also focus on crop losses accruing due to pest and insect attacks.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment of benefits to farmers from vertical coordination in dairy. To analyze this, the authors first document the functioning of the cooperative (and changes thereof with increased competition). The paper also uses a field survey to quantify the benefits. In the process, the authors investigate the issue of selection/participation of farmers.

This paper is largely based on a survey of households in two districts of Indian Punjab along with secondary data. Descriptive as well as regression analyses have been conducted to address the research questions.

The paper presents several key findings. First, the public sector enterprise has been dynamic as competition from private sector has brought favorable changes. There is also evidence of negative selection of farmers implying that those who join dairy cooperatives would have significantly inferior outcomes outside vis‐à‐vis the ones who actually are independent. No bias against farmers by their herd size and significant gains upon participation can explain the scaling up from the demand side. In other words many farmers would find it profitable to become members of the cooperative.

Although the survey was extensive in measurement of costs by including variable and fixed costs of production, marketing as well as transaction costs, the data on fixed costs turned out to be noisy. Further, the analysis based on cross‐sectional data could not account for unobserved farmer level individual heterogeneity. Also, the outside option for the farmer in this paper is to be independent. It is possible that this could be integration with private sector, a case that the study does not cover.

Benefits from coordination should motivate policies for promoting it. The finding that increased competition has fostered dynamism in the public sector has implications far beyond the case studied here.

Despite the extensive system of cooperatives, there do not exist rigorous studies that assess the gains to farmers from this type of horizontal and vertical coordination. The extent of gains establishes a measure of foregone earnings since the supply chains in India remain uncoordinated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore farmer acceptance of a biofortified staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization. The paper focuses on the hypothetical introduction of a high-iron pearl millet variety in Maharashtra, India, where pearl millet is among the most important staple crops.

A choice experiment is used to investigate farmer preferences for and trade-offs among various production and consumption attributes of pearl millet. The key pearl millet attributes studied include days it takes pearl millet to mature, color of the roti (flat bread) the grain produces, the presence of high-iron content (nutritional attribute), and the price of the pearl millet seed. Choice data come from 630 pearl millet-producing households from three purposefully selected districts of Maharashtra. A latent class model is used to investigate the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for pearl millet attributes and to profile farmers who are more or less likely to choose high-iron varieties of pearl millet.

The results reveal that there are three distinct segments in the sample, and there is significant heterogeneity in farmer preferences across these segments. High-iron pearl millet is valued the most by larger households that produce mainly for household consumption and currently have lower quality diets. Households that mainly produce for market sales, on the other hand, derive lower benefits from consumption characteristics such as color and nutrition.

The main limitation of the study is that it uses a stated preference choice experiment method, which suffers from hypothetical bias. At the time of implementing this study biofortified high-iron pearl millet varieties were not yet developed, therefore the authors could not have implemented revealed preference elicitation methods with real products and payment.

The method used (stated preference choice experiment method) is commonly used to value non-market goods such as environmental goods and products that are not yet in the market. It’s application to agriculture and in developing countries is increasing. As far as the authors know this is the first choice experiment implemented to investigate farmer/consumer preferences for biofortified crops. The study presents valuable information for development and delivery of biofortified crops for reducing micronutrient deficiencies.

This paper aims to study low adoption of modern technology for pearl millet in Rajasthan, India, from the perspective of social networks. The state has the lowest adoption of modern pearl millet seeds among Indian states. . In particular, this paper tries to identify the limitations of channels with endogenous effects, thereby limiting large-scale adoption of modern varieties that would require social multipliers.

Defining the network/reference groups in terms of social identity and geographical proximity, this paper utilizes the intensity of interaction with different network nodes to identify the presence of endogenous effects. In particular, this paper uses the interaction of intensity of social exchange with the group level adoptions to establish the presence of endogenous effects. With adequate controls, greater intensity of interaction having a bearing on technology choice can only happen when there exists social learning (endogenous effect) and cannot be associated with other forms of social effects (namely, exogenous and correlated effects).

This paper finds evidence for the existence of endogenous social effects in adoption but largely from exclusionary channels. A comprehensively mapped network is used with its intensity to explain the extremely low rate of adoption. Only close-knit networks that, with social fragmentation, limit benefits to few, affect adoption significantly. The non-functionality of less exclusionary information sources and services can be a factor underlying low adoption.

The main limitation of the study is inability to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity because of the cross-sectional nature of data. Further, although an extensive mapping of individual networks has been done, it still cannot be guaranteed to be exhaustive.

With fragmentation, large-scale adoption programs would require networks, sources of information and services that are less exclusionary. Based on the survey data, media and non-religious organizations play a focal role here in the adoption of modern technology. This finding is extremely crucial for policy, as these channels comprise direct policy levers in a fragmented society like India. Indeed, several government programs in India have relied on these channels to run large-scale adoption programs. Their ineffectiveness could be a prime factor for such limited dissemination of technology in Rajasthan.

In different settings, social fragmentation could be an important factor determining technology adoption outcomes. The evolving consensus in the literature based on several studies is that ethnic fragmentation has potentially negative consequences on macro-economic performance (Alesina and Tabellini, 1989 and Collier, 2000). In the literature on technology adoption, the role of fractionalization is somewhat under-studied. With fragmentation, there can be significant micro-level impacts (for instance, low technology adoption of a crop) if channels that are inclusive are not well developed. The finding that channels like extension services, media or organizations are not effective in determining choice of technology does not mean that they should not be tapped. The empirical findings suggest that, in their current form in the state of Rajasthan, the roles played by these are limited. The policy implications would be to develop these systems in a way that there is a greater uptake. Recall that less than 4 per cent of the respondents got information on seeds from media sources, an extremely low number. There is certainly scope for increasing the outreach of these channels that are much more important for spread of agricultural technology in a fragmented society.

This paper is an attempt to come up with an empirical strategy to mitigate the issues related to reflection problem. In the cross-sectional data itself, we use the interaction of group choices with intensity of interaction within the group to introduce a non-linearity that tries to bypass the identification issues as in reflection problem. This method of introducing non-linearity in cross-sectional data is a novel attempt to achieve identification of endogenous effects.

This research seeks to establish the roles of marketer-driven relationship-building strategies – relationship-marketing orientation and knowledge sharing with customers on intrinsic customer motivation and the continued usage of mobile banking apps.

An online survey was conducted among 342 m-banking users in India. Data were analyzed and the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

Relationship-marketing orientation was found to have a positive and significant influence on customer intrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing with customers. Customer intrinsic motivation was found to play a dual role as a driver of continued mobile banking usage and as an intervening mechanism between relationship-marketing orientation and continued usage of mobile banking.

This research was conducted only in one country. It was therefore not possible to consider varying regulations across markets and their effects on continued usage of mobile banking.

First time in the m-banking literature, this research establishes the pivotal role of intrinsic customer motivation in the continued usage of mobile banking. While evaluating drivers of continued usage of m-banking, most studies considered various aspects of the technology itself. This research instead evaluates consumer-centric and marketer-led antecedents in driving the continued usage of mobile banking.

The COVID-19 crisis has sped up digital transformation and technologies by several years. Customers have dramatically shifted to online channels, and businesses have quickly responded by offering additional canals for online shopping and payment. Customers have also been exhibiting greater preferences for contactless payments, and mobile banking has therefore become a norm in both developed and developing countries. This study aims to understand the antecedents of mobile banking actual usage in an early adoption stage setting (i.e. Morocco) through a comprehensive conceptual model combining the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, the DeLone and McLean IS success model and additional constructs extracted from extent literature. The moderating effects of age, gender and education are also examined and analyzed using multigroup analysis.

Based on data collected from 616 Moroccan users, the authors empirically tested the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

First, consumer M-banking actual usage has a significant effect on customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; at the same time, attitudinal loyalty was significantly influenced by customer satisfaction. Second, while M-banking actual usage was significantly influenced by effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, habit, service quality, trust, attitude and perceived security, the results show no significant impact of system quality and information quality. Third, the relationship between M-banking actual usage and its antecedents was significantly moderated by age, gender and education.

The findings help bank practitioners to understand the importance of meeting customers’ needs and expectations as a prerequisite in enhancing actual usage, satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. More importantly, the authors emphasize the need for demographically oriented strategies to target different demographic segments of customers.

The study bridges a gap in M-banking literature by offering a thorough understanding of consumers’ mobile banking use during the pandemic. The findings provide evidence of the applicability of the conceptual model proposed in this research. Furthermore, the reflection of the moderating effects of gender, age and education emphasizes the mobile banking usage disparities among dissimilar demographic segments.

This study aims to explore the influence of innovation in entrepreneurial activities and job creation, examine the influence of innovation in entrepreneurial activities on jobs creation and investigate the moderating influence of entrepreneurial characteristics between entrepreneurial activity, innovation and job creation.

The data was collected from Oman Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data 2020. Sample of 2,000 individuals was involved in entrepreneurial activities. SPSS and PLS software were used to test the structural model and research hypothesis.

The results revealed that innovation affects the level of created jobs. Entrepreneurial activity has a significant influence on innovation, jobs created and an indirect effect on jobs created through the mediating influence of innovation. All direct and indirect relationships of entrepreneurial activity and innovation with the expected jobs are insignificant. The findings demonstrate that demographics moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and innovation.

The study outcomes will be useful for policymakers to understand the innovation types in entrepreneurial activities and whether these enterprises can create future jobs.

The findings will help entrepreneurial ecosystems and managers to strengthen their business ventures using innovative business models.

This research will provide decision-makers with mechanism on how better business environment will benefit stakeholders.

While this topic is widely investigated in developed countries, little is known about the impact of innovation on entrepreneurial activities in creating jobs in developing countries. This research contributes to entrepreneurship innovation and institutional theory literature by understanding the role of the entrepreneurship conditions framework that support the jobs creation.