This thesis deals with different forms of strategic complementarities in industrial organization problems. Chapter 2 is an attempt to develop a unified approach to endogenous heterogeneity by constructing a general class of two-player symmetric games that possess only asymmetric pure-strategy Nash equilibria. These classes of games are characterized in some abstract sense by two general properties: payoff non-concavities and some form of strategic substitutability. While the second characteristic allows to show the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibria, the second precludes these equilibria to be symmetric. Other two classes of games that always possess asymmetric, but never symmetric, pure-strategy equilibria, although they are not of strategic substitutes are also studied. This chapter also generalizes a number of models dealing with two-stage games, with long term investment decisions in the first stage and product market competition in the second stage. Chapter 3 investigates the effects of forward looking behaviour in technology adoption. The setup is an overlapping generations model where agents choose between two alternative networks taking into consideration both the installed base and the expected base. The latter element is the distinctive feature of the approach. It is shown that a unique equilibrium exists, on which agents coordinate their expectations. While exhibiting hysteresis, the equilibrium adoption path does not comply with technologies locking in. Network choices are characterized both in terms of their long run properties and the expected time of adoption. Chapter 4 studies the problem of a monopolist who produces a good with network externalities and faces the possibility of selling a new higher quality. Within the vertical product differentiation it identifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for quality improvement to take place when a good, produced by a monopolist, exhibits positive network externalities. When network effects are not very strong, the monopolist produces both the high and the low quality and thus quality improvement takes place. In this case, he will use an introductory pricing strategy for the quality that benefits from network externalities, not maximizing however the network size. As the network effect becomes more important, the monopolist will have an incentive to practise introductory pricing and produce both qualities. Finally, if the network externality is higher than the intrinsic quality differential, quality improvement does not take place. Chapter 5 deals with the problem of an incumbent producing a low quality good with network externalities that faces the threat of entry by a higher quality good. In the framework of a vertical product differentiation model, it is identified a necessary and sufficient condition under which quality improvements are spontaneously adopted along, in spite of the existence of network effects. This condition says that the intensity of network effects on consumers' preferences should not exceed twice the differential of intrinsic qualities existing between the two variants. Finally, chapter 6 is concerned with the optimal path of prices of a monopolist who operates in a network industry for a finite horizon. Agents obtain intrinsic utility from the good and from the fact that in the past there have been other consumers using it. It is observed that the monopolist has an incentive to introduce the good at initially low prices and to increase the price as the time goes by. This chapter concludes with a necessary and sufficient condition under which the initial price, and only the initial one is zero. This condition is related both with the intensity of the preferences for the network and with the time horizon of the monopolist.

There has been little understanding of how consumers adopt and use the mobile Internet. This dissertation seeks to bridge this gap in prior literature by focusing on consumers’ cross-platform consumption behavior on mobile devices. The first study of this dissertation addresses how the adoption of mobile applications influences the use of corresponding mobile websites. Pseudo-panel analysis based on repeated cross-sectional data suggests that the introduction of a mobile app by a major national media company leads to a significant increase in demand at the corresponding mobile news website. In addition, it reports that this effect is greater for consumers with higher appreciation for concentrated news content, with stronger propensity for a particular political viewpoint, and with fewer time constraints. The results are consistent with the interpretation that adoption of a provider’s news app stimulates corresponding mobile news website visits. The second study of this dissertation examines whether the quality of local fixed-line Internet service influences mobile Internet adoption and usage. An empirical analysis shows that local fixed-line Internet speed relates negatively to mobile Internet adoption and usage; if the local fixed-line connection is insufficient, consumers tend to get online through their mobile phones. Further, better local mobile Internet speed increases the likelihood of adopting and using the mobile Internet. Neither fixed-line nor mobile Internet speed has significant impacts on mobile-specific offline services such as taking photos or videos. In some circumstances, competition between the two platforms is stronger, such as among younger consumers and those living in areas with lower fixed-line Internet speeds.

In recent years, development practitioners and policy makers have increasingly become interested in social capital as an additional instrument for economic development. However, within the applied economics literature on the adoption of agricultural technologies, research on the role of social capital in adoption decision-making is scant. Furthermore, there is a paucity of information regarding the determinants of social capital accumulation among rural households in developing economies. This study examines the nature of the relationship between social capital and crop management decisions of Ugandan banana farmers. This dissertation develops a model of technology adoption that incorporates social capital and offers two explicit mechanisms through which social capital may influence technology adoption. A model of the agricultural household, which considers the effects of incomplete markets in farm production decisions, provided the theoretical framework for an econometric analysis to predict the choice and demand of improved banana management technology. The core theoretical framework was extended by explicitly incorporating social capital as a component of exogenous income and information accumulation processes. Empirical analysis was based on the primary data collected in a survey of 400 banana-producing households in Uganda through face-to-face interviews with the primary production decision makers. The households were selected from the three major banana-producing regions of Uganda using multi-stage random sampling methods. A combination of econometric methods was employed. A Probit model was used to estimate the probability of using an improved banana management practice and participation in an association. The extent of use of improved banana management practices was estimated by two methods, namely, ordinary least squares (OLS) and the Heckman procedure to account for sample selection in some equations. Intensity of participation in associations was estimated with a Poisson model. A negative binomial model that allows for over dispersion in the data was employed to identify the determinants of the intensity of participation in private social networks. The results of the study indicate that different aspects of social capital shape the decision to use and the extent of use of an improved management practice, but the nature of effect is specific to the practice as well as the form of social capital. Participation in associations and the characteristics of those associations are important determinants of banana production management decisions. Participation in associations and private social networks is, in turn, influenced by household wealth, education, institutional environment, and social heterogeneity of the community. Aside from social capital, other factors that are significant in explaining variation in use of improved crop management practices among farmers have been identified. Market incentives and household factor endowments were the most important of these factors in decisions regarding use of improved banana management practices. The existence of separability between consumption and production decisions, a major analytical feature of the model of the agricultural household, also appears to be practice-specific, which suggests that production orientation is associated with the use of practices. / Thesis (PhD (Agricultural Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted

Although many organizations strive to employ the latest technologies, the adoption and diffusion of these technologies might not happen as anticipated. The growth of small-to-medium businesses can have a detrimental impact on the efficiency of the employees in executing internal business processes. In many cases, particularly in this scenario, technology was called upon to remedy the situation. Through a canonical action research project, we investigated and analysed the technology adoption and diffusion issues that the professional construction management team of a small-to-medium-sized construction company was experiencing. During this action research project, literature suggested that technology adoption issues were confirmed. In addition new issues were identified and analysed. By means of a conceptualized figure, the changes in the understanding and relationships among mobile computing adoption and diffusion issues experienced in this construction company were illustrated. This study concludes by providing a theoretical framework that illustrates the mobile computing adoption and diffusion issues, as well as an explanation of significant issues that should be considered in the endeavour of successful mobile computing adoption and diffusion within a small-to-medium-sized construction company, based in Gauteng, South Africa. / Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Informatics / unrestricted

Growing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions as well as electricity prices have led to more serious efforts by the state and federal government to provide promote renewable energy at affordable costs. I examine the effect of policies and incentives on added commercial solar PV capacity while controlling for pro-environmental preferences, energy prices, geographic controls, and demographic controls. I use county-level data that spans twelve northeastern states and the District of Columbia from 2005 through 2013. I utilize the Tobit estimator to account for a mass point of solar PV capacity at zero kilowatts. The results suggest that loans, performance-based incentives, rebates, sales tax waivers, and net metering standards increase the amount of added solar PV capacity. Solar Renewable Energy credits have a small impact on PV capacity growth, while interconnection standard and renewable portfolio standards are not statistically significant. If policy administrators aim to increase the amount of commercial solar PV, then they should consider loans, rebates, and performance-based incentives as the most effective policies.

The critical need for access to network technology resources supporting advanced tools of academics and research is evident across disciplines and locations around the world. As research conducted by and in partnership with higher education institutions continues to increase in demand, it is incumbent on institutions to ensure the resources for this work are available as standard features for their faculty and students. The purpose of this study was to identify opinions of end users on the challenges to adoption of research and education (R&E) network resources at their local higher education institutions. The intent is to inform the R&E community about these challenges and to consider them when planning for the life cycle of network design and deployment. Study participants represented Information Technology (IT) leadership at 23 higher education institutions located within a regional R&E network consortium. Q methodology was applied to an established technology adoption model, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh, Morris, G. Davis, F. Davis, 2003) and informed by Rogers’ (2003) theory on the diffusion of innovations. The UTAUT model was modified to address attitudes toward technology resources enabled through access to R&E networks. Statistical analysis of the Q-sort data and examination of additional qualitative data were completed on data collected in this study. The combined methods served to identify factors based on the most prominent characteristics of each group and interpreted in alignment to the study framework. Results demonstrated the diversity of institutions and locations represented. Salient viewpoints expressed by respondents implied themes related to the value of a collegial environment within which to develop and deploy new projects, the critical need for institutional capacity and support, and the challenges of accessing and use of network resources. Theory can benefit from these results as a resource for exploring further modification of the initial UTAUT model to include technologies and audiences not previously included. Practitioners will benefit through reference to the findings when planning for the human and technological infrastructure capacity needed to support research and academic at their institutions.

A great deal of research has been conducted in the last three decades to find the determinants of technology usage and adoption. Numerous models have been developed in the United States and other developed countries to enhance the understanding of this issue. However, two main questions remain as to what extent these models and conclusions based on their past usage can be applied to other countries, particularly less developed nations, and to what degree social influence affects consumers' decisions across cultures. Recently, Kulviwat et al. (2007) proposed a new model - Consumer Acceptance of Technology (CAT) - that was shown to significantly improve the prediction of intentions to adopt high-tech products compared to the immensely popular Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis 1989) by integrating cognitive and affective factors. This study extends the CAT model by adding social constructs in order to account for the effects from others rather than from one's own thoughts and feelings. Because of the addition of social influences, this modified model was named CATS. The objectives of this dissertation were threefold. The first objective was to investigate the impact of social influence on adoption of technological innovations by including three social constructs: social influence, susceptibility to normative influence, and susceptibility to informational influence. The second objective was to examine cognitive, affective, and social influence in three countries (The United States, State of Kuwait, and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) in order to determine if their relative roles in predicting attitudes and intentions are stable or if they vary in some predictable way. The third objective was to examine the effect of an extremely important cultural dimension, individualism/collectivism, on the relationships in the model. In general, the results provided empirical support for CATS across cultures by using structural equation modeling and path analysis. More specifically, the findings confirm what was found in previous studies about the important roles of cognition (percieved usefulness) and affect (pleasure, arousal, and dominance). Additionally, this research showed that social (social influence) also has a significant, direct, and positive effect on attitude toward adopting technology innovations. Also, as expected from previous studies, attitude had a significant, positive, and direct effect on adoption intention. Finally, the role of a culture's individualism/collectivism on the relationships in the model was surprising. The only factors that were significantly moderated by individualism/collectivism were related to affect: pleasure and dominance. This new finding suggests that consumers in individualistic cultures are more likely than consumers in collectivistic cultures to have their attitudes shaped by how enjoyable an innovation is and how much more "in control" it makes them feel. Overall, the analysis showed that the CATS model fit the data best. This means the incorporation of cognition, affect, and social into a model fit the data better than cognition (TAM) or cognition and affect (CAT) alone. These findings have valuable implications for marketing theory, methodology, and practice.

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New agricultural technologies can improve productivity to meet the increased demand for food that places pressure on agricultural production systems in developing countries. Because technological innovation is one of major factors shaping agriculture in both developing and developed countries, it is important to identify factors that help or that hinder the adoption process. Adoption analysis can assist policy makers in making informed decisions about dissemination of technologies that are under consideration. It is also important to estimate the impact of a technology. This dissertation contains three essays that estimate factors affecting integrated pest management (IPM) adoption and the impact of IPM on sweet gourd farming in Bangladesh. The first essay estimates factors that affect the timing of IPM adoption in Bangladesh. It employs duration models, fully parametric and semiparametric, and (i) compares results from different estimation methods to provide the best model for the data, and (ii) identifies factors that affect the length of time before Bangladeshi farmers adopt an agricultural technology. The paper provides two conclusions: 1) even though the non-parametric estimate of the hazard function indicated a non-monotone model such as log-normal or log-logistic, no differences are found in the sign and significance of the estimated coefficients between the non-monotone and monotone models. 2) economic factors do not directly influence the adoption decision but rather factors related to information diffusion and farmer's non-economic characteristics such as age and education. Particularly, farmer's age and education, membership in an association, training, distance of the farmer's house from local and town markets, and farmer's perception about the use of IPM affect the length of time to adoption. Farm size is the only variable closely related to economic factors that is found to be significant and it decreases the length of time to adoption. The second paper measures Bangladeshi farmers' attitudes toward risk and ambiguity using experimental data. In different sessions, the experiment allows farmers to make decisions alone and communicate with peers in groups of 3 and 6 to see how social exchanges among peers affect attitudes toward uncertainty. Combining the measured attributes to household survey data, the paper investigates the factors affecting those attributes as well as the role of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion in technology choice by farmers who: face uncertainty alone, in a group of 3, or in a group of 6. It finds that Bangladeshi farmers in the sample are mostly risk and ambiguity averse. Their risk and ambiguity aversion, moreover, differ when they face the uncertain prospects alone from when they can communicate with other peer farmers before making decisions. In addition, farmer's demographic characteristics affect both risk and ambiguity aversion. Finally, findings suggest that the roles of risk and ambiguity aversion in technology adoption depend on which measure of uncertainty behavior is incorporated in the adoption model. While risk aversion increases the likelihood of technology adoption when farmers face uncertainty alone, only ambiguity aversion matters and it reduces the likelihood of technology adoption when farmers face uncertainty in groups of three. Neither risk aversion nor ambiguity aversion matter when farmers face uncertainty in groups of six. The third paper presents an impact assessment of integrated pest management on sweet gourd in Bangladesh. It employs an instrumental variable and marginal treatment effects approach to estimate the impact of IPM on yield and cost of sweet gourd in Bangladesh. The estimation methods consider both homogeneous and heterogeneous treatment effects. The paper finds that IPM adoption has a 7% - 34% yield advantage over traditional pest management practices. Results regarding the effect of IPM adoption on cost are mixed. IPM adoption alters production costs from -1.2% cost to +42%, depending on the estimation method employed. However, most of the cost changes are not statistically significant. Therefore, while we confidently argue that the IPM adoption provides a yield advantage over non-adoption, we do not find a robust effect regarding a cost advantage of adoption. / Ph. D.

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