Numerous Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) applications have been developed in irrigated agriculture. While there are studies focusing on ICTs impacts at the farm level, no research deals with this issue at the Water Authority (WA) level where ICTs can support strategic decisions on land and water allocation. The present study aims to design a theoretical model to estimate economic benefits from the ICT-informed decision process of water management in agriculture. Specifically, the study analyzes the motivations driving a case study WA using ICTs to support strategic management decisions involving risky choices. Results show that the WA under investigation has potentialities to save water and to implement adaptation strategies to climate change. Higher benefits from ICTs are attainable in areas with limited water availability and where the WA can effectively manage land allocation and control water delivery volumes. The study concludes that ICTs might have a disruptive potential in fulfilling WA’s specific information needs, but there is still a need to improve their accuracy due to the risk surrounding the decisions at stake.

In rural areas of LatinAmerican Countries, irrigation requirements for perennial crops, like cocoa are expected to increase. This paper develops a novel holistic approach to model private investment decisions in irrigation adoption by small and mid-sized cocoa farmers that face competing sources of uncertainty. In agricultural studies data collection through surveys often leads to issues of missing information on key measured variables. Our approach deals simultaneously with the issue of endogeneity of considering diverse risk sources and with the missing values in key covariates. The study considers multiple levels of irrigation adoption in a context where traditional and modern irrigation systems might coexist.The main contributions of this paper are both its methodological approach and its empirical application filling a knowledge gap on irrigation adoption.

Subjective behavior of decision makers (DMs) is paramount when modeling information and communication technology (ICT) adoption choices in irrigated agriculture. Here, efficient ICT-aided irrigation plans often involve a certain degree of uncertainty, and differential attitudes toward it can cause uncoordinated actions between actors. Some DMs will implement ICT information, while others will not because they do not trust ICT reliability. This risks undermining the achievement of ICT benefits in terms of water saving at the irrigation district level. By distinguishing between different sources of uncertainty, taking the form of risk and ambiguity, in the present paper, we developed a new decision model to assess the impact that subjective behavior and learning processes have on the efficiency of ICT-aided irrigation plans. A case study was selected to implement the model in simplified settings. The results revealed the potential of ambiguity to limit ICT information implementation and to hinder water governance. Implications mainly concern the development of uncertainty management policies to favor DMs becoming familiar with the new ICT with lower ambiguity.

Several studies address the topic of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) adoption in irrigated agriculture. Many of these studies testify on the growing importance of ICT in influencing the evolution of the sector, especially by bringing down information barriers. While the potentialities of such technologies are widely investigated and confirmed, there is still a gap in understanding and modeling decisions on ICT information implementation. This gap concerns, in particular, accounting for all the aspects of uncertainty which are mainly due to a lack of knowledge on the reliability of ICT and on the errors of ICT-information. Overall, such uncertainties might affect Decision Makers’ (DM’s) behavior and hamper ICT uptake. To support policy makers in the designing of uncertainty-management policies for the achievement of the benefits of a digital irrigated agriculture, we further investigated the topic of uncertainty modelling in ICT uptake decisions. To do so, we reviewed the economic literature on ambiguity, in the context of the wider literature on decision making under uncertainty in order to explore its potential for better modeling ICT uptake decisions. Findings from the discussed literature confirm the capabilities of this approach to yield a deeper understanding of decision processes when the reliability of ICT is unknown and provides better insights on how behavioral barriers to the achievement of potential ICT-benefits can be overcome. Policy implications to accompany the sector in the digitalization process include mainly: (a) defining new approaches for ICT-developers to tailor platforms to answer heterogeneous DMs’ needs; (b) establish uncertainty-management policies complementary to DM tools adoption.

No abstract