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Abstract
GIS-derived measures of location and space have increasingly been used in models of land use and ecology. However,
they have made few inroads into the literature on technology adoption in developing countries, which continues to rely
mainly on survey-derived information. Location, with all its dimensions of market access, demographics and agro-climate,
nevertheless remains key to understanding potential for technology use. The measures oflocation typically used in the adoption
literature, such as locational dummy variables that proxy a range of locational factors, now appear relatively crude given the
increased availability of more explicit GIS-derived measures. This paper attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of integrating
GIS-measures into analysis of technology uptake, for better differentiating and understanding locational effects. A set of
GIS-derived measures of market access and agro-climate are included in a standard household model of technology uptake,
applied to smallholder dairy farms in Kenya, using a sample of 3330 geo-referenced farm households. The three technologies
examined are keeping of dairy cattle, planting of specialised fodder, and use of concentrate feed. Logit estimations are
conducted that significantly differentiate effects of individual household characteristics from those related to location. The
predicted values of the locational variables are then used to make spatial predictions of technology potential. Comparisons are
made with estimations based only on survey data, which demonstrate that while overall explanatory power may not improve
with GIS-derived variables, the latter yield more practical interpretations, which is further demonstrated through predictions
of technology uptake change with a shift in infrastructure policy. Although requiring large geo-referenced data sets and high
resolution GIS layers, the methodology demonstrates the potential to better unravel the multiple effects of location on farmer
decisions on technology and land use.
© 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.