Abstract
The factors that affect farmers' technology adoption in rice farming in Sri Lanka were examined by estimating the technology adoption function for land preparation, crop establishment, and weeding operations based on district level data. Wage rate in rice farming, farm size, technology transfer by migrant farmers, irrigation conditions, adoption rate of modern varieties, crop establishment method, temperature, and dummy variables for region, season and year were included in the analysis. The estimation revealed that, in spite of the remarkable regional diversity, either wage rate or farm size was a significant determinant in farmers' technology adoption, indicating that the farmers try to adopt ‘appropriate technology’consistent with the theory of induced technical change. Irrigation conditions, technology transfer, modern varieties, and crop establishment methods are the factors found to be significant in the technology adoption function for certain operations. Besides these factors, how-ever, dummy variables for some regions remained highly significant, implying that some important region specific factors remain to be identified.
