Adoption of new plant varieties has played a significant role in eradicating global hunger. Previous research has mainly focused on farmer adoption and impact of new crop varieties, although upstream adoption of technologies in plant breeding can generate substantial multiplier effects on downstream impacts. This study moves upstream in the innovation system to generate policy advice on adoption and transfer of accelerated rice breeding technologies. More specifically, we assess the determinants of global adoption of rapid generation advance (RGA) through a sample of 158 rice breeders operating in various research institutes worldwide. Moving upstream in the innovation system has important theoretical and empirical implications due to the smaller number of decision-making units in the adoption process and the increasing role of institutional and managerial factors that may overrule individual adoption motivations. We revisit multi-stage models and devise the most robust estimation method that can be used in this situation. To generate insights on the impact of individual versus institutional adopter characteristics on upstream technology adoption, we juxtapose the response curves of the determinants of RGA adoption in rice breeding among alternative adoption stages, levels of conditionality and model specifications. Our findings confirm the importance of institutional and managerial factors and suggest that adoption and transfer of breeding technologies require breeding institutes to provide an enabling environment in which breeders are encouraged to take risks and are given sufficient freedom to experiment with and implement new technologies.

中文翻译：

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重新审视上游技术采用的多阶段模型：来自水稻育种快速世代推进的证据

采用新的植物品种在消除全球饥饿方面发挥了重要作用。以前的研究主要集中在农民采用和新作物品种的影响上，尽管上游采用植物育种技术可以对下游影响产生巨大的乘数效应。这项研究在创新系统的上游移动，以产生有关采用和转让加速水稻育种技术的政策建议。更具体地说，我们通过在全球各个研究机构工作的 158 名水稻育种者的样本来评估全球采用快速世代推进 (RGA) 的决定因素。由于采用过程中的决策单位数量较少，以及可能推翻个人采用动机的制度和管理因素的作用越来越大，因此在创新系统中向上游移动具有重要的理论和实证意义。我们重新审视了多阶段模型，并设计了可以在这种情况下使用的最稳健的估计方法。为了深入了解个人与机构采用者特征对上游技术采用的影响，我们将水稻育种中 RGA 采用的决定因素的响应曲线并列在替代采用阶段、条件水平和模型规范之间。