The study investigates the relationship between trust in social media and beliefs and preventive behaviours in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 1008 respondents in South Africa to study how trust in social media relative to other information sources predicts perceived risk and adoption of preventive behaviours. Although engagement with and trust in social media do not predict less adoption of preventive behaviours, trusting information from social media more than information from mass media or scientists is associated with less risk perception from COVID-19 and reduces the adoption of preventive behaviours (including vaccines).

The study assess mobile money demand for utility bill payments and identify factors that affect its adoption in Ethiopia. We use data from urban household survey and dichotomous choice experiment that randomly offer a range of prices for using mobile money to pay utility bills. We find that households are willing to pay a higher price to use mobile money than the actual price charged by current mobile money service providers for the payment of goods and services. However, demand is sensitive to price changes. Our findings suggest strong latent demand for mobile money in processing payments.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been receiving increasing attention in recent policy dialogues for its potential to improve agricultural transformation, risk management, and welfare. This study seeks to provide evidence on the welfare impacts of CSA adoption and its complementarity with non-farm employment using household-level data from Ethiopia combined with novel historical weather data. The study uses a multinomial endogenous switching regression model to deal with selection bias and farmer heterogeneity. The results show that households adopting CSA enjoy higher welfare benefits than non-adopter households. Households experience a higher welfare impact (lower monetary and multidimensional poverty rate) when CSA and non-farm employment are adopted simultaneously. However, there is less evidence regarding the complementarity between CSA and non-farm employment when considering per capita consumption expenditure. The study findings will have important policy implications for climate change adaptation, resilience, and poverty reduction in low-income countries.

We analyze the risk attitude of women and men entrepreneurs in the micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and investigate the factors that influence the risk attitude of MSE owners. The empirical analysis of the study consists of two parts. First, we use a moment-based approach to estimate the risk preferences of male and female entrepreneurs. Second, we estimate a regression model to understand the correlates of risk attitude and decompose the gender difference in risk aversion using the Oaxaca-Blinder technique. The results indicate that MSE entrepreneurs are risk-averse, with a relative risk premium of 1.5%. We also find that females are slightly more risk-averse than male entrepreneurs. Our regression estimates show that entrepreneurs’ risk attitude is significantly correlated with the age and experience of the entrepreneur, marital status, education level and financial literacy, wealth, sector, and business form. Furthermore, the predictor variables significantly explain the gender difference in risk aversion, while the unexplained component is insignificant. This suggests that the gender difference in risk aversion is due to disparities in socioeconomic factors than a biological difference in risk preference.