Agricultural information is transferred through social interactions;
therefore, ties to agricultural informants and network structures within
farmers’ local neighborhoods determine their information-gathering
abilities. This paper uses a spatial autoregressive model that takes
account of spatial autocorrelation to examine such network connections,
including friendship networks and advice networks, upon farmers’
knowledge-gathering abilities during formal agricultural training. We
found that peer advice networks are important to support
knowledge-gathering activities, while friendship networks are not.
Further examination of network structures confirms that farmers who
occupy a central position in their local neighborhood networks are found
to perform better in learning outcomes to some extent, indicating that
local network position is positively related to problem-solving ability
in an unknown environment outside their locale.