Does Farmers' Lottery Participation Affect Technical Efficiency of Banana Production in Rural China?

Increasing the agricultural technical efficiency is crucial to poverty reduction for smallholder farmers in developing countries. This study attempts to examine the impact of farmers' lottery participation on technical efficiency from the perspective of the farmers' revealed risk preferences, and to explore the influence mechanism between lottery participation and technical efficiency, based on the primary data collected from banana farmers in rural China. We used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the combined technical efficiency of the farmers and constructed an endogenous switching regressions (ESR) model to analyse the impact of lottery participation on the technical efficiency of banana farms. A quantile regression model was used to analyse the heterogeneous effects under the different levels of the farmers' technical efficiency. Then, a mediation model was employed to clarify the influence mechanism of lottery participation on technical efficiency in terms of two pathways: the adoption of biopesticide and the soil improvement technique. The empirical results show that farmers' lottery participation revealed their risk preferences and several factors affected banana farmers' participation in the lottery. Specifically, male farmers are more likely to participated in the lottery than female; farmers' working hours negatively affected their lottery participation; and the use of a smartphone significantly increased the likelihood of farmers buying lottery tickets. We also found that farmers who participate in the lottery have higher technical efficiency in banana production, and the average treatment effect of lottery participation on the technical efficiency was 21.5%, indicating that the farmers with revealed risk preferences can significantly promote technical efficiency. The effect of risk preferences on economic performance is more significant for farmers at the middle technical efficiency level. The explanation is that the adoption of new technologies (e.g., biopesticides) played a mediating effect between farmers' lottery participation and their technical efficiency. New technologies are more likely to be adopted by farmers who participate in the lottery, resulting in higher technical efficiency. Therefore, policymakers and stakeholders can better design technology extension programs according to the different attitudes of the target farmers towards risks in developing regions.