Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Global Environmental Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha

Crop booms at the forest frontier: Triggers, reinforcing dynamics, and the T
diffusion of knowledge and norms
Victoria Junquera , Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
⁎

Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Crop booms in forest frontiers are a major contributor to deforestation and global change. Because of their non-
Crop booms linearity, intensity, and unpredictability, booms are specific instances of land change, namely land system re-
Land regime shifts gime shifts, which require an analysis going beyond that of their drivers or individual actors’ decisions. So far,
Land use dynamics the combined effect of behavioral dynamics at the household, village, and higher levels, which are often mu-
Frontier
tually-reinforcing, have not been considered in the empirical analysis of crop booms. In this paper, we aim to
Borderland
further the understanding and the theory behind the dynamics of crop booms and land regime shifts. We focus on
the smallholder-driven northern Laos rubber boom and analyze two case study areas with different intensity of
rubber expansion. We use a combination of household surveys and interviews with villagers, government offi-
cials and private sector actors to analyze the preconditions, triggers and reinforcing effects at household and
higher levels that help explain the timing and extent of the boom. In particular, we focus on the role of in-
formation transmission and imitation in household decisions to adopt and expand rubber. Our findings show that
the rapid expansion of rubber in northern Laos was in part the result of household decisions spurred by economic
and policy triggers that changed the real and perceived benefits of growing rubber. In addition, there were
higher-level and mutually-reinforcing dynamics, such as the conversion of village communal forests, a rush for
land, and individual behavior contingent on others’, including imitation. The transmission of information
through social networks played a key role in rubber adoption decisions, but the diffusion of new norms and
values was also important and may have accelerated adoption decisions. Rubber adoption and expansion de-
cisions thus had normative and informational, as well as knowledge-based and imitation components.

1. Introduction dichotomized as smallholders versus commercial operations (Fox and

Expansion of agricultural commodities is the leading cause of de-
forestation and an important driver of global change (Alexander et al.,
2015; DeFries et al., 2010; Fehlenberg et al., 2017; Foley et al., 2005;
Hansen et al., 2013). Most instances of large-scale agricultural expan-
sion in recent decades – soybeans, cattle, and sugarcane in South and
Central America, oil palm, rubber, and coffee in Southeast Asia – have
taken place at very rapid rates (Gibbs et al., 2010; Müller et al., 2014),
earning them the qualifier of commodity or crop “booms” (Fox and
Castella, 2013; Gatto et al., 2015; Hecht, 2005; Meyfroidt et al., 2013).
Understanding crop boom dynamics is thus essential for designing
strategies to address global deforestation and ultimately global change
(Fehlenberg et al., 2017; Foley et al., 2005; Meyfroidt et al., 2018).
Understanding the causes of land change requires investigating the
actors involved and their behavior (Hettig et al., 2016; Meyfroidt, 2013;
Rindfuss et al., 2007; Rudel, 2007). These actors are typically
Castella, 2013; Meyfroidt et al., 2014), both of which have been iden-
tified as important agents of deforestation (Pacheco, 2012), often acting
jointly (Barbier, 2012). Commonly cited factors influencing smallholder
decisions include biophysical determinants; household labor, land, ca-
pital, education, access to credit, and power position; expected returns
to land and labor; non-financial considerations such as reducing labor
drudge, preserving value for future generations, or seeking social re-
cognition and acceptance; and formal and customary rules, social
norms, and cultural beliefs (Caldas et al., 2007; Feintrenie et al., 2010;
Ornetsmüller et al., 2018; Overmars and Verburg, 2006; Sun and
Müller, 2013; Vanwambeke et al., 2007).
These behavioral factors, in combination with major drivers at
multiple levels such as economic and policy changes (Alexander et al.,
2015; DeFries et al., 2010; Geist and Lambin, 2002; Rudel et al., 2009;
Weinzettel et al., 2013), and spatial determinants such as biophysical
and socioeconomic characteristics (Meyfroidt, 2015; Piquer-Rodríguez

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vjunquer@ethz.ch (V. Junquera).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101929
Received 2 July 2018; Received in revised form 3 March 2019; Accepted 29 May 2019
Available online 28 June 2019
0959-3780/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
et al., 2018; van Asselen and Verburg, 2012), have been used to explain
agricultural expansion. However, they do not fully explain the parti-
cular dynamics of crop booms (Müller et al., 2014), that is, their timing,
speed, and extent. Crop booms exhibit rapid initial expansion rates
followed by a slowdown and levelling off, resulting in cumulative
adoption patterns that resemble the characteristic S-shaped curve of
technology adoption and diffusion (Griliches, 1957; Rogers, 1983,
p.11), followed by a decline in the case of boom-and-bust dynamics
(Ornetsmüller et al., 2018). Because of their non-linearity, unpredict-
ability, and intensity, crop booms are considered land use regime shifts
(Müller et al., 2014).
Ramankutty and Coomes (2016) suggest that to understand such
land use regime shifts, the governing preconditions, triggers, and self-
reinforcing processes should be analyzed. Preconditions or predisposing
factors (Meyfroidt, 2015) provide the incentives or pressures that make
the environment favorable for the shift (Ramankutty and Coomes,
2016). Triggers are rapid changes (Meyfroidt, 2015) that provide the
immediate impulse for a land regime shift (Ramankutty and Coomes,
2016), for instance by prompting major farming decisions (Sutherland
et al., 2012). Triggers and preconditions are important causes of the
location or timing of an event, but not of the event as such (Meyfroidt,
2015). Self-reinforcing processes maintain the new regime, establishing
conditions that make it difficult to shift back to the old regime
(Ramankutty and Coomes, 2016).
Empirical studies of crop booms and technology diffusion in agri-
culture mention social dynamics at multiple levels that exhibit char-
acteristics of such preconditions, triggers, and self-reinforcing me-
chanisms. These include group deliberation and decision-making
processes (Ostrom, 2000), network externalities such as infrastructure
and marketing networks (Besley and Case, 1994), imitation (Clement
and Amezaga, 2008; Pomp and Burger, 1995; Vanwambeke et al.,
2007), and social networks as vehicles for the diffusion of new
knowledge (Busch and Vance, 2011; Sunding and Zilberman, 2001) and
new values and beliefs (Montefrio et al., 2014). This suggests that in-
dividual and group decisions are both important, and that behavioral
dynamics underlying agricultural expansion have normative and in-
formational, as well as imitation and knowledge-based elements.
However, these elements are rarely assessed jointly.
Imitation is associated with social or Bayesian learning, where
agents observe the outcome of others’ decisions and use this informa-
tion to update their own beliefs (Bandura, 1971; Besley and Case, 1994,
1993; Gale, 1996; Pomp and Burger, 1995; Sunding and Zilberman,
2001), and with herd behavior, the theory that agents ignore their own
information based on the assumption that others have better informa-
tion (Banerjee, 1992; Epstein, 2008; Gale, 1996) or are better able to
interpret information, for instance because they are better educated
(Pomp and Burger, 1995). Thus, while social learning assumes inter-
nalization of information and knowledge formation (Zins, 2007), herd
behavior could be described as “mere copying”, but both presume real
or perceived information asymmetries (Gale, 1996) as key factors af-
fecting decisions. The bridging of such asymmetries leads to behavioral
uniformity (Gale and Kariv, 2003), particularly in social networks (Choi
et al., 2004), and may be accentuated among similar individuals (“peer
group effect”), or following unlikely success stories (“surprise effect”)
(Pomp and Burger, 1995).
Imitation is also linked to norm-guided behavior (Clement and
Amezaga, 2008; Goldstein et al., 2008; Montefrio et al., 2014) aimed at
creating and maintaining social structure and cooperation (Selten,
2002), or providing decision heuristics that facilitate decision-making
under time and information constraints (Gigerenzer, 2002). Knowledge,
imitation, information, and normativity can therefore be closely inter-
related in decision-making processes.
In this paper, we analyze the rubber boom in northern Lao PDR
(“Laos”) with the aim to further the understanding and the theory
2
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
behind the dynamics of crop booms, that is, their timing and intensity.
The rapid expansion of rubber in northern Laos after 2003 (Shi, 2008;
Vongvisouk et al., 2014) and generally over large regions of montane
Southeast Asia in the last decades (Li and Fox, 2012; Ziegler et al.,
2009) has been mostly smallholder-driven (Epprecht et al., 2018; Fox
and Castella, 2013) and is a typical example of a forest frontier crop
boom. It has been explained in terms of the expanding market for latex
driven by increased demand in the People’s Republic of China
(“China”), the rise of rubber prices after 2002, and land use policies
incentivizing cash crop production in Laos (Shi, 2008). Additionally, in
borderland regions, kinship relations to Chinese relatives who had
successfully planted rubber and “gotten rich” were a powerful incentive
for adoption (Shi, 2008; Sturgeon, 2013). These drivers fit well with the
above-mentioned factors influencing farmer land use decisions. How-
ever, while they partly explain the occurrence and the timing of land
change, they do not explain its intensity, or why it was particularly
explosive in some areas and not in others. Work carried out with a
political economy perspective has in part addressed these questions by
pointing out the role of the government in strategically allocating
concessions to exert its control in upland areas (Dwyer, 2014). In the
context of smallholder-driven crop booms, however, other factors were
relevant as well.
We hypothesize that (i) the northern Laos rubber boom was only in
part the result of individual and independent decisions spurred by
policy and economic triggers; (ii) there were also higher-level and
mutually-reinforcing dynamics that help explain the intensity of the
boom, such as village-level decisions, as well as imitation and other
forms of behavior contingent on others’; and (iii) new knowledge, but
also new values and norms, transmitted in social networks created
preconditions that affected adoption decisions and reinforced the boom.
To address these hypotheses, we analyze household rubber adoption
and expansion in two case study areas of northern Laos’ Luang Namtha
Province characterized by different extent and speed of rubber expan-
sion. We carry out a mixed methods analysis based on household sur-
veys of socioeconomic and land use characteristics, including open-
ended questions on the motivations underlying rubber adoption deci-
sions, as well as focus group discussions at the village, district, and
province levels. This work furthers the understanding and the theory on
crop booms and land system regime shifts by providing quantitative
and qualitative evidence of multilevel social processes that help explain
the timing and intensity of the northern Laos rubber boom, and which
could be relevant to other instances of land regime shifts.
2. Methods
2.1. Case study area description and historical background
The two case study areas are located in northern Laos’ Luang
Namtha Province, bordering on Muang La (Mengla) County in
Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, southern China (Fig. 1).
They are located around Oudomsin village in Sing District and Prang
village in Vieng Poukha District, and are connected to China through
Highway 17B and Highway 3, respectively, both of which were com-
pleted between 2005-2007. Land use in each area includes a mixture of
food crops, cash crops, and forest, including a portion of the Nam Ha
National Protected Area (NPA).
The Oudomsin case study area lies in the Muang Sing Valley, tra-
ditionally a paddy rice production area with abundant flat terrain. The
partly paved road network on either side of the highway is largely
passable with a vehicle. Population density is higher than in the Prang
case study area and there is higher ethnic diversity. Villagers have close
cross-border social ties to Chinese villages dating back to the pre-
colonial period (Lagerqvist, 2013; Sturgeon, 2013).
The Prang case study area comprises four villages in Vieng Poukha
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929

Fig. 1. Map of the two case study areas and villages included in the survey (solid points). Luang Namtha Province is shaded in the lower map.

District and one village in Namtha District, all of which belong to the quickly impassable except on foot.
Khmu ethnic group. The terrain is more mountainous than in
Oudomsin, soils have a lower amount of organic carbon (Chaplot et al., 2.1.1. Land use and cash crop history
2010), and dirt paths extending radially from the main highway are Prior to the production of export-oriented (“cash”) crops,

3
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
livelihoods in both case study areas relied on the production of paddy
rice in lowland flooded rice paddies and upland rice in higher altitude
and sloping upland1 plots. Traditional upland rice production, termed
shifting cultivation, swidden, or slash-and-burn, involves forest burning
followed by a production cycle of one to three years and a fallow period
of 5–15 years (Restorp, 2000), after which the burning and production
cycle are repeated.
China’s progressive economic aperture starting in the 1970s, its
accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the official
reopening of border crossings between China and Laos in the early
1990s, reactivated cross-border social connections and created new
regional market opportunities for export-oriented agricultural produc-
tion in Laos (Fujita, 2006; Sturgeon, 2013) such as sugarcane, rubber,
or bananas.
In Luang Namtha Province, rubber was first grown by smallholders
around 1994 in a few borderland villages and in Ban Hat Nyao, a village
of Hmong refugees returned from China (Dianna, 2005; Shi, 2008;
Sturgeon, 2013). In 2003, rubber boomed in Luang Namtha (Cohen,
2009; Shi, 2008; Thongmanivong and Fujita, 2006) and grew from
1000 ha in 2003 to 16,000 ha in 2007 (Cohen, 2009) and 41,0002
hectares in 2011, around 43 percent of which is under smallholder
production. Plantations grew nationwide from under 400 ha in 1996, to
almost 5000 ha in 2005 (Manivong, 2007), and over 140,000 ha in
2008 (Fox and Castella, 2013), replacing mostly old-growth and sec-
ondary forest (Fox et al., 2014; Li and Fox, 2012).
2.1.2. Land use planning and village relocations
Villages in both case study areas have a recent history of frequent
relocations, be it for security reasons during the Second Indochina
(“Vietnam”) War, or as part of postwar government efforts at nation-
building and economic development (Baird and Shoemaker, 2007;
Lestrelin et al., 2012). These relocations of upland ethnic villages re-
duced available land and caused heavy economic and health strains
(Evrard and Goudineau, 2004; Schoenweger and Üllenberg, 2009).
Pressure on the land was further increased with the return of war re-
fugees whose land had been partly reallocated (Sturgeon et al., 2013).
Land Use Planning and Land Allocation (LUPLA) activities started
in the early 1990s under the guidance of foreign donors with the
stated goals of rural development and forest protection through the
separation of intensified commercial agriculture from protected nat-
ural ecosystems and the progressive elimination of shifting cultivation
(Lestrelin et al., 2012; Takai and Sibounheuang, 2010). Village forest
categories were defined and boundaries delimited, and a system of
National Protected Areas (NPAs) was established. Land allocations,
carried out inconsistently, assigned land titles to households’ paddy
fields and more informal “Use” titles for upland fields, but not for
shifting cultivation or fallows, effectively encouraging (permanent)
crop plantations.
Traditional shifting cultivation was portrayed as “backward”, en-
vironmentally destructive, and inefficient (Baird and Shoemaker, 2007;
Kenney-Lazar, 2018; Lu, 2017), contrasting with more nuanced findings
(Heinimann et al., 2017; Ziegler et al., 2011). The practice was re-
stricted through land use zoning and by limiting the duration of the
fallow period (Evrard and Goudineau, 2004; Sturgeon et al., 2013).
1
We use “upland” to refer to two phenomena: (i) when referring to agri-
cultural land, it signifies sloping and higher elevation to distinguish it from
“flatland” areas; (ii) in relation with upland ethnic minority villages; in this
context we do not distinguish between “upland” and “highland”, although
differences exist (Lund, 2011).
2
Based on an estimated 17,937 smallholder rubber hectares and 49,502
hectares of agriculturally used land in 2011 (Epprecht et al., 2018), and 23,444
rubber hectares in planted rubber concessions (Hett et al., 2019) in Luang
Namtha.
4
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
2.2. Data collection
A total of 110 household surveys were conducted in October-
December 2016 and November-January 2017. Ten households were
randomly selected within each of the six villages selected in the
Oudomsin case study area and in each of the five villages of the Prang
case study area (Table 1). Most surveys were conducted with the (al-
most exclusively male) head of the household. All surveys were carried
out in Lao by the main author and a local translator.
The household survey elicited information on “current” (December
2017) land use and socio-economic conditions, as well as household
income and labor in the year 2005, reflective of pre-rubber conditions.
Plot-level information included size, location, distance from the village
in meters and minutes, slope, current land use, land use history (year of
land use change and all previous land uses dating back to the year when
the plot was first opened or acquired), proprietorship, yield, as well as
current price and gross and net income for cash crop plots. The age of
fallows and/or the approximate diameter of the trees was asked.
Household characteristics include number of persons, number of labor,
age and education of the head of the household, agricultural and total
income, rice production, and number of buffalo, cows, and pigs.
For cash crops, including rubber, the reasons for planting the crop
were asked as a two-part, open-ended question (“What are the most
important reasons that you decided to plant [the crop], and how did
you know it would work out?”), and the price of the crop at the time of
planting was asked. Data referring to the past, such as land use change
dates, were elicited in a process of storytelling and checked for con-
sistency. Interviewees were asked to point to the location of each plot
on a pre-printed A-1 size 2014 satellite image; this task was facilitated
by orienting the map to the North, pointing out geographic references,
and assisting with the identification of locations. Plot distance and size
information elicited verbally were cross-checked on the map for con-
sistency.
Focus groups with village elders and/or an interview with the vil-
lage chief were carried out in each village to understand its history and
land use trajectory. Interviews were also carried out with District and
Provincial forestry and natural resources offices, three private sector
rubber investors or companies (Mr. Tong Ly, Mr. Khampao, and Tai
Chiang Rubber Company), and one cardamom investor from
Chaleunphone Agriculture company.
2.3. Empirical analysis
Empirical analysis of the household survey data is aimed at under-
standing household uptake (adoption and expansion) of rubber in both
case study areas. Because rubber is planted in upland plots, we consider
other upland cash crops existing in the Prang case study area as well,
namely cardamom and an oil crop. We refer to planting the first plot as
adoption and subsequent plots as expansion.
We first use Mann-Whitney and Fisher tests (Corder and Foreman,
2014) to compare the means of household and plot-level continuous
and categorical variables by village and case study area. To assess
household information about rubber prices, we define two variables.
One reflects whether the household knew the price of rubber prior to
adoption. The other reflects the fraction of all household rubber plots
for which price was known prior to planting. We also compare house-
hold characteristics of early adopters (those planting rubber before
2007 in the Oudomsin area and before 2009 in the Prang area) versus
late adopters.
To analyze the self-reported motivations for adopting rubber, we
categorize the answers to the open-ended question and create house-
hold-level binary variables (1 if the household mentioned the reason,
else 0). Answers indicating being told about, hearing about, or seeing
the benefits of rubber, are ascribed to the category “told” and are in-
terpreted as knowledge-based decisions. Answers indicating imitation
(“I followed others”) are categorized as “following”. A few households
 V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey

Table 1
Case study area and village description.
Prang case study area Oudomsin case study area

Coordinates (E 101.19753, 101.27102) (N 20.75278, 20.83424) (E 101.19012, 101.25200) (N 21.13229, 21.19991)

(longitude range; latitude range) (WGS
84)
Area (ha) 6871 4788
Villages inside CSA (ethnic group of villages Prang, Talong, Nam Lung, Nam Sing, Khosung Donechai (Tai Lue), Oudomsin, Nam Det Somboun (Akha), Lakham (Akha), Nam Mai, Phoudone Tan, Nam Det Mai,
not included in the survey) Punko, Pakha, Sop-I (Akha)
Land Use Planning and Land Allocation 2006-2010 (Project Anthong); 2010-2014 (German Cooperation Agency 1997-2002; 2002-2007 (German Cooperation Agency GIZ)
(LUPLA) GIZ)
Population in studied villages (2017) 1509 2255
Population density in 2005* (persons/ha) 0.18 0.61

5
Highway connection with China Highway 17B Highway 3
Road distance to nearest border crossing to Boten Border Crossing, 60 km Panghai Border Crossing, 4 km
China
Villages included in the survey Prang Talong Nam Nam Sing Khosung Oudomsin Nam Mai Phoudone Tan Nam Det Mai Pakha Punko
Lung
Year of settlement in current location 1994 1984 1985 1997 1993/1997 1992 1980 1980 1984 1997/2002 1984/2002
(/second wave)
Main LUPLA process 2005-2010 2005-2010 2005-2010 2005-2010 2005-2010 2002-2006 2002-2006 2002-2006 2002-2006 2002-2006 2002-2006
Number of households 56 59 63 84 61 53 90 126 73 46 58
Population 253 279 339 337 301 220 426 624 392 267 326
Households interviewed 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Population interviewed 51 57 57 50 58 59 87 79 58 55 64
Ethnic group Khmu Khmu Khmu Khmu Khmu Iu-Mien Iu-Mien Iu-Mien Akha Akha Akha
Converted village forest? No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

* Estimated based on (Messerli et al., 2008).

Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
provided answers corresponding to more than one category, and 11 out
of 110 households did not answer this question. We further categorize
whether the source of information about rubber came from relatives,
other villagers (non-relatives), or an investor or company, and whether
it originated in the respondent’s village, other villages in Laos, or in
China.
For the household land use change analysis, we classify the land use
types reported in the household survey. We differentiate between land
uses on lowland and upland plots. Lowland land uses include rice
paddy, banana, and sugarcane. Upland land uses include forest, old
fallow, upland rice fallow, upland rice, sugarcane, rubber, two varieties
of cardamom (Paksong and Guangdung), as well as an oil crop present in
the Prang area (Sacha Inchi or magnaman). While in 2017 there were no
upland sugarcane plots in either case study area, some sugarcane was
planted in upland plots in the late 1990s. Fallows older than nine years
or, equivalently (based on Sovu et al., 2009), with a diameter larger
than nine centimeters, are categorized as old fallow.
We use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to identify
the most relevant variables that help explain household-level rubber
uptake. As the dependent variable we select household hectares of
rubber or upland cash crops (rubber, cardamom, and oil crop) in 2017.
This reflects household uptake, since households did not have any
rubber, cardamom, or oil crop prior to adoption. Other authors have
used the share of cash crops as the dependent variable, which reflects
the relative affinity for a crop and is used to explain household liveli-
hood and allocation decisions (e.g., Nguyen et al., 2017). However,
since many households planted rubber on forest land that did not ori-
ginally belong to them in Oudomsin, a significant area of agricultural
land in Prang is communal, and households frequently produce rice or
sugarcane in subleased plots, the share of cash crops is not an adequate
measure of uptake in this context.
We specify models to compare uptake between case study areas (Eq.
(1)), and analyze uptake within each case study area (Eq. (2)).
yij = αj + β Xij + εij (1)
yi = β Xi + εi (2)
i = household; j = case study area; y = household hectares of
rubber or household hectares of upland cash crops.
We hypothesize that uptake is determined by plot accessibility; pre-
adoption household characteristics, including demographics (number
of persons and number of labor), income, and agricultural land; rubber
price knowledge; timing of adoption; and stated motivations for
adoption.
We use household demographics and income in 2005 and agri-
cultural area in 2002 to represent pre-adoption conditions. Given the
uncertainty in reported 2005 income values, we use household hectares
of rice paddy in 2002 as a proxy for pre-boom household income. We use
2017 household demographic values instead of 2005 values because both
sets of data are strongly correlated, and the 2017 data set is complete,
whereas the 2005 data set is not. Plot accessibility is calculated as dis-
tance and slope averaged over all household rubber or upland cash crop
plots. Pre-adoption household agricultural land includes lowland and
upland plots, but we do not include old fallows, a number of which we
suspect to be illegally converted forest. Table A1 summarizes all vari-
ables used in the analysis. Forward selection and backward elimination
are used for a first identification of regressors based on the Akaike cri-
terion. All statistical and regression analyses are conducted using the R
statistical language and environment (R Core Team, 2016).
3. Results
3.1. Land use trajectories
3.1.1. Oudomsin case study area
The first households to relocate to the area could convert forest to
6
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
paddy and upland rice fields to meet their subsistence needs and gen-
erally possessed large herds of buffalo, although buffalo numbers were
significantly reduced as a result of relocations. Households with local
connections could more easily identify unclaimed fallows and learn
how to cultivate paddy. Cash income was generated from selling excess
rice, opium, and cattle. During the 2002–2007 LUPLA process, villagers
were informed that traditional shifting cultivation was no longer al-
lowed and customary ownership no longer applicable to fallows older
than three years, although not all villagers remember being informed
about this policy. Since upland rice production is not possible with such
short rotation periods (Evrard and Goudineau, 2004), this policy ef-
fectively encouraged conversion of fallows to plantation agriculture as a
means for securing land. Upland rice production all but disappeared
from the area except when double-cropped during the first three years
of rubber production.
The production of cash crops for the Chinese market resulted in a
series of crop booms. In lowland plots, it started with sugarcane in the
late 1990s, followed by banana from 2013 to 2017 and again sugarcane
after 2017. In upland plots, rubber was first planted in 2003, and by
2004 a rubber boom was under way. Villagers set out to plant as much
rubber as possible, especially because it soon became apparent that “all
the land was being used up”, and “soon there would be no more land
available”. Most households planted their first rubber plot between
2003 and 2008 and subsequent plots shortly after adoption (Fig. 3a). A
second, smaller wave of rubber expansion took place in the years
2012–2014 when many households leased their rice paddies to banana
investors, obtaining large amounts of cash and freeing up household
labor.
Rubber expanded largely at the expense of forest, in particular vil-
lage communal forest, and to a lesser extent in household fallows and
sugarcane plots (Figure A1; Table A3). While the government en-
couraged rubber adoption, forest conversion did not comply with
LUPLA. Despite this, District officials “could not issue fines at the time
because every village in Sing District did it”. The first fines were as-
sessed after 2005; many households were fined but could keep their
rubber plots. The expansion slowed down mainly because of land
scarcity, and a majority of households expressed that they would plant
more rubber if they could. Households planted and sold rubber in-
dependently, and no household interviewed had a contract with a
company.
3.1.2. Prang case study area
Most households adopted paddy rice after relocation but a con-
siderable number still cultivate upland rice due to limited flatland
availability. Because the government pursues the goal of rice self-suf-
ficiency, fallow periods of five to six years are tolerated. Villages pos-
sess upland fallow reserves, in stark contrast to the Oudomsin area,
where “all land is used up”. The lack of flatland area also makes the
region unsuitable for sugarcane production.
Under the first LUPLA process in 2006–2009, upland rice plots were
allocated to households (five if the household did not have paddy and
three otherwise), cows and village pastureland were assigned for pov-
erty alleviation, and upland cash crops were promoted. Households
received free seedlings of Paksong cardamom. In 2005, Tong Ly, then
deputy-governor of Luang Namtha Provide, promoted rubber in the
area, organized visits to Hat Nyao village to demonstrate its advantages,
and offered contracts to households who could not afford their own
investment. In 2013, Khamsao Rubber Company offered additional
contracts. While rubber adoption coincided with the arrival of these
two investors, many households planted on their own, and only 19
percent of rubber hectares are under contract.
Most households planted only one rubber plot (Fig. 3), mostly on
household fallows (Figure A1; Table A3), and forest was not converted.
All households have at least one upland cash crop plot; 82 percent of
households have rubber, 86 percent have cardamom, and the oil crop
has a minor presence.
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
3.1.3. Case study area comparison
Prang households adopted rubber later (Fig. 2), and in 2017 they
had on average almost four times less rubber (1.1 versus 4 versus
hectares) and two times fewer upland cash crop hectares than Ou-
domsin households (Table A2). The lower uptake of upland cash crops
in the Prang area is partly explained by the smaller size of the house-
hold (20 percent) and household labor force (40 percent), given that
rubber and cardamom are roughly equally labor intensive on a per
hectare basis, as well as the lower amount of pre-boom rice paddy area
(60 percent), which is less labor and time intensive than upland rice
production. Accessibility is also worse in the Prang area and fewer
households have a motor vehicle, which results in households spending
on average 20 percent more time accessing each plot than in Oudomsin
even though their plots are closer to the village. Pre-rubber household
income was also 4.5 times higher in Oudomsin than in Prang, largely
due to sugarcane production. Nevertheless, regression results show that
Prang area households had a significantly lower uptake of rubber and
upland cash crops even when controlling for household size, pre-boom
household agricultural land, and upland plot accessibility (Table A5a).
Results also show that household size, household head education, and
pre-boom agricultural area are correlated with rubber uptake in each
case study area (Table A5b-c).
Early adopters planted significantly more rubber in both case study
areas (Tables A6a-c). In Oudomsin, early adopter households had
higher pre-boom household income and were more likely to have re-
ceived information about rubber from Chinese relatives than late
adopters (Table A4). In Prang, early adopter households had higher pre-
boom household labor and were more likely to be informed by a
company, whereas late adopters received information predominantly
from other villagers. Early adopters were older in both areas, but
adopting early is not correlated with education. Households that did not
grow any rubber in Prang were not statistically different from adopter
households in 2005.
3.2. Triggers of rubber expansion
A number of policy and economic changes help explain the timing
of the rubber expansion. An important factor behind the spread of
rubber in northern Laos was the 2004 Opium Replacement Program
(ORP), which provided incentives for Chinese companies establishing
rubber plantations and processing plants in Laos and Myanmar. In
Luang Namtha Province, 47 ORP projects were established between
2004 and 2008 (Lu, 2017). The ORP acted as a trigger, albeit differently
in both case study areas. Villagers in Oudomsin frequently stated that
they had observed their Chinese relatives’ rubber plantations since the
7
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
Fig. 2. Planted hectares of Rubber and Upland Cash
Crops in each village. Key events are indicated with
arrows (black: events that apply to both case study
areas; blue: events in Prang; red: events in Oudomsin).
CSA = Case Study Area; LUPLA = Land Use Planning
and Land Allocation Process; UCC = Upland Cash
Crops (Rubber + Cardamom + Oil Crop). (For inter-
pretation of the references to colour in this figure le-
gend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article).
1990s, but could not plant at the time because “no one else was
planting, and one alone cannot plant”. This was in part because a small
market would not attract buyers, and because the cost of building roads
into the forest could not be borne by single households. Thus, in order
for rubber to take off, a perception of market stability was required. The
establishment of rubber companies under the ORP after 2004 may have
sent such a signal. Companies were also the main source of information
about rubber for roughly a quarter of adopter households in Prang.
A land use policy that made cattle owners liable for the damage
caused by their animals was strictly enforced around 2004/05 and re-
sulted in the near-elimination of free-roaming cattle. Similar regula-
tions are reported to have been enforced in Luang Namtha Province
since 2000 (Takai and Sibounheuang, 2010). Previously, large numbers
of unattached cows and especially buffalos had caused damage to crops
every year, preventing villagers from investing in high-value upland
crops, given the economic unfeasibility of fencing or surveillance. One
Oudomsin villager stated: “At the time there were a million buffalo
roaming around in Muang Sing. If a buffalo destroyed your crop, you
could not complain. I only planted rubber in 2006 and not earlier be-
cause since [the policy], you could complain”.
LUPLA programs overruled customary tenure of fallows older that
three years, although implementation was laxer in the Prang area. The
goal of this policy was to encourage planting cash crops on household
fallows and restricting rice production to paddy land. Thus, plots for-
mally assigned to a household under LUPLA were often immediately
converted to a cash crop – mostly rubber in the Oudomsin area and
cardamom in the Prang area. In addition, while the LUPLA process was
meant to outline village communal forest boundaries for their protec-
tion, one of its consequences was that some of the newly allocated
village forests were immediately converted to rubber. Between 2004
and 2006, all but one village in the Oudomsin area divided their Village
Use Forest among households for planting rubber and constructed forest
roads; Prang area villages, however, did not convert their communal
forests.
Intensified opium eradication campaigns in Luang Namtha in
2000–2005, and in particular in Sing and Long Districts in 2002–2003
(Cohen, 2009; Lyttleton, 2004; Sturgeon et al., 2013), resulted in a
sudden and major loss of revenue for many upland and in particular
Akha villages, prompting migrations to the lowlands. The second re-
location waves in 2002 in Pakha and Punko villages may have been
triggered by this policy, which exacerbated land shortages (Cohen,
2009; Evrard and Goudineau, 2004; Lyttleton, 2004) and forest con-
version.
Rubber in northern Laos was strongly influenced by developments
in Yunnan Province, where smallholder rubber adoption had been
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
Fig. 3. Rubber hectares planted (normalized by 2017 population in each case study area). Colors indicate (A) the first household (HH) rubber plot (black) and
subsequent household rubber plots (colors); (B) whether the rubber price was known or not at the time of planting; (C) the reason stated for planting the first
household rubber plot; second and later rubber plots are shown in grey.
promoted in 1985, 1995, and 2003 (Sturgeon, 2013). Rubber trees take
seven years to mature, with production peaking around year 20 and
ending around year 30 to 35 (Manivong and Cramb, 2008). When in-
ternational rubber market prices started rising after 2002 (Fig. 4),
mature rubber plantations in Chinese villages across the border became
extremely profitable (Sturgeon, 2013). Hat Nyao and other early
adopter villages in Luang Namtha Province also became famous for
their lucrative rubber harvests. Within the Oudomsin area, a well-
known villager from Donechai village started tapping rubber in 2002
and became a local example of success with the crop. Thus, in both case
study areas, but especially in Oudomsin, villagers had close and tan-
gible examples of successful rubber production.
In the Oudomsin area, rubber was also a welcome substitute for
sugarcane, which is very labor intensive and whose yield starts to wane
after three years. The cash earned from sugarcane production also en-
abled many households to make the necessary capital expenditures for
establishing rubber plantations.
8
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
3.3. Social networks, information transmission, and the role of imitation
Over 70 percent of Oudomsin area households cite first-hand con-
tact with Chinese villagers (mostly relatives) who had succeeded with
rubber as the most frequent reason for their decision to adopt rubber
(Table 3). A frequent narrative was “I planted rubber because I saw my
relatives in China getting rich” – an example of a knowledge-based
decision (Table 2). Other qualities mentioned include the long-lasting
aspect and heritability of rubber, the steadiness of income (the har-
vesting period lasts eight months, during which latex is tapped every
other day and can be sold frequently), and the relative ease of labor
after the establishment phase. Prang area households cite following
others, as well as receiving information about the benefits or market
price of rubber from a company or from other villagers, as the most
frequent reasons for adopting. However, very few Prang area villagers
had direct contact with other villagers who were already harvesting and
economically benefitting from rubber.
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
Imitation played an important role in the spread of rubber. Around
40 percent of households in each case study area stated that their main
reason for adopting rubber was that they were “following others”.
Households who stated following others as the main reason for
adopting rubber were less informed about rubber prices (Table 3). In
Oudomsin the fraction of followers was stable throughout the boom,
whereas in Prang significantly more late adopters were followers. In
both case study areas, early adopters were roughly two times more
likely to have been “told” about rubber than late adopters (Fig. 3; Table
A4). Thus, early adopters seemed to be motivated rather by informa-
tion, and later adopters were more prone to be imitators.
Many responses indicating imitation were simply “I just followed
others” or “I followed the community” (Table 2). Some justifications for
imitation behavior reflect a desire for social acceptance and avoidance
of social isolation or stigma (“if I don’t plant [rubber], others will think
I am lazy”). In addition, and especially in the Prang area, some answers
reflected a wish for equality (“I want to be like the others”) and equity
(“if the price goes down, we will all get less”), all of which suggests
normativity.
Households that stated knowledge-based reasons for adoption
(“told”) planted significantly more rubber in both areas, in part because
these households were also more likely to be early adopters. A large
majority of Prang area households (76 percent) knew the price before
adoption. In the Oudomsin area, only half of the households knew the
Table 2
Examples of self-reported motivations for rubber adoption, categorized by normative and informational, and knowledge-based and imitation-based components.
Knowledge
Normative “I wanted to be rich like my relatives”
“I knew from my relatives in China, ‘if you want a car, a house, you should
plant rubber’”
Relatives in China told us, ‘Why not produce rubber? We also cut the forest
and made money’”
“District officials have 2000 trees per household”*
Informational “My relatives in China told me to plant rubber trees, they told me that the
rubber price was high: 10,000 KIP per kilo”
“I heard from villagers in Luang Namtha, ‘rubber is less work than upland
rice, and you can leave it to your children’. I also heard from other Khmu on
the radio”
*2000 trees are equivalent to 4 ha of rubber.
9
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
Fig. 4. Points: Price of rubber if known at the time of
planting each household rubber plot, by case study
area (CSA). The smoothing lines and shaded areas re-
present loess smoothing and 95 percent confidence
intervals. Dashed lines indicate rubber prices in Luang
Namtha Province (Vongvisouk and Dwyer, 2017) and
in the Singapore Exchange, reflective of prices in
China (Indexmundi, 2018). CNY = Chinese Yuan.
price of rubber (43 percent) or knew that the price was high (7 percent).
Whereas in Oudomsin there is not a clear relationship between price
information and rubber uptake, Prang households who knew the price
prior to adoption planted significantly more rubber, even when con-
trolling for early adoption (Table A6b-c). Thus, while being “told” in-
creased rubber uptake in both areas, price information was not key in
influencing adoption decisions in Oudomsin, but was correlated with
uptake in Prang.
In Oudomsin, households learned about rubber prices pre-
dominantly from relatives in China, or from other persons in their vil-
lage or in nearby villages, while in Prang rubber price information was
obtained mostly from companies and from other villagers (Figure A2).
Despite the different origin of rubber price information, households in
both case study areas had remarkably similar information (Fig. 4),
which in turn supports the notion that knowledge about rubber prices
alone did not drive the boom. Furthermore, during the early years of
the expansion, rubber prices known by villagers in both case study
areas were close to Chinese market prices (Fig. 4). After around 2007,
rubber price information in the case study areas more closely reflects
the market prices recorded by Provincial authorities in Luang Namtha.
Oudomsin households that obtained information (“told” or
“follow”) from Chinese villagers or relatives planted on average over
one hectare more rubber (Table A6b). In Prang, households that re-
ceived information about rubber from a company or from other
Follow
“Everyone planted, I followed the community. It does not matter if I get a lot or
little from my rubber trees; if everyone loses, I also lose, if everyone wins, I also
win. I want the same as other people”
“I did not know the price; I was following village decisions […]. If I don’t plant like
the others, I will be criticized by others saying I am lazy”
“I followed the community, everyone was doing the same; I don’t know who had
the idea”
“I just planted for money. I had no idea how it would make me money. I just saw
other people plant and just planted”
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929

Table 3
Reason for adopting rubber. Values indicate the number of times each reason was mentioned, and the percent of responses in each category where the price of rubber
was known prior to adoption.
Reason for adopting rubber Oudomsin Oudomsin Prang Prang Total Total Knew
Knew price (%) Knew Price (%) Price (%)

Imitation-based I followed others (“follow”) In China 4 25% – –

In my village 19 26% 13 69%
In another village (not 1 100% 3 67%
China)
Subtotal follow 24 29% 16 69% 40% 45%
Knowledge-based I was told about the benefits or I saw others In China 31 55% – –
succeed (“told”) In my village 2 50% 5 60%
In another village (not 1 0 10 80%
China)
By a company – – 10 90%
Subtotal told 34 53% 25 80% 60% 64%
Total 58 43% 41 76% 100% 57%

villages, such as Hat Nyao, planted more rubber, but receiving in-
formation from relatives did not significantly affect uptake (Table A6c).
Thus, Oudomsin villagers with connections to Chinese relatives planted
more rubber and earlier, and Prang area villagers who cite being in-
formed by a company also planted more and earlier.
4. Discussion
4.1. Preconditions, triggers and self-reinforcing mechanisms of the northern
Laos rubber boom
We identify social dynamics at the household and higher levels that
can be characterized as preconditions, triggers and reinforcing mechan-
isms, which help explain rubber expansion in Oudomsin and Prang, and
differences between the case study areas. Oudomsin area villagers ex-
pressed that they had long known about and wanted rubber – a desire
that was accentuated after 2002 when rubber prices started growing. In
contrast, by 2005–2006 Prang area villagers had heard “rumors” or
suggestions, but only a minority had witnessed the benefits of rubber. We
suggest that the strong desire to plant rubber among Oudomsin area
households, stemming from their close and direct contact with successful
rubber production, is a precondition that helps explain the differences in
rubber uptake in both areas, and the boom in Oudomsin.
The ORP, the cattle policy, opium eradication measures, and the
LUPLA process were all triggers of the rubber boom by changing rela-
tively quickly the real and perceived feasibility of successfully growing
rubber, and by reducing the viability of previous livelihood options.
The construction of rubber processing plants and the proliferation of
investors and middlemen in Luang Namtha under the ORP contributed
to the perception that the nascent rubber market was robust. The
convergence of rubber prices transmitted in villagers’ social networks
and those recorded in Provincial statistics might also be a reflection of
the progressive growth of the rubber market in Luang Namtha, resulting
in better-informed government authorities. The perception of market
solidity was an important condition for households to invest in rubber,
which is expensive and risky given the long maturity period. Because of
its proximity to China, many Oudomsin villagers were certain that that
they would be able to “sell to the Chinese”, just like their relatives did.
In Prang, companies and investors guaranteed a market for latex, but
offered perhaps less tangible or convincing evidence; this was in part
due to a certain lack of trust among villagers, who feared that compa-
nies could take over their land if they engaged in a contract.
In addition, Chinese land use policies may have had a direct impact
in the Oudomsin area. Starting in 2003, the Xishuangbanna government
launched a rubber promotion program for poverty alleviation that
provided free seedlings to villagers, as a response of which many
smallholder farmers planted rubber in household and village forests,
replacing forest with rubber monocultures (Sturgeon, 2013), exactly as
it happened in the Oudomsin area around the same time. Lao villages
with close connections to China followed not only the same aims as
their Chinese kin – planting rubber – but also the same means – con-
verting the village forests, although this was illegal in Laos. Thus, de-
spite the fact that there were no formal or informal cross-border rubber
growing arrangements, as described for other Sino-Lao borderland
areas (Sturgeon, 2013), the Oudomsin area was influenced by devel-
opments across the border through cross-border social ties. Thus, while
triggers were similar in both case study areas, the different geo-
graphical and social distance to China contributed to some of the dif-
ferences in outcomes.
The high rubber prices have often been cited as a main driver or
trigger of the rubber boom in Southeast Asia (Ahrends et al., 2015). We
find that a large majority of Prang area households and around half of
Oudomsin area households knew the price of rubber before adoption. In
Oudomsin, however, 50 percent of households who did not know the
price prior to adoption adopted because they saw or were told about its
benefits. Thus, high prices did drive the boom, but price knowledge was
less of a driver of adoption than obtaining direct and often qualitative
evidence about the profitability and other benefits of the crop. That
Prang area households were more affected by price information is in
part explained by the fact that they had less such direct evidence
compared to Oudomsin households. Pomp and Burger (1995) find si-
milar results for cocoa adopters in Sulawesi, where 70 percent of
households did not know price or yield prior to adoption, a fifth of
which still cite these variables as a reason for adopting.
Triggers help explain the start of the expansion (Meyfroidt, 2015),
but not the subsequent intensity. We suggest that the different rates of
expansion are the result of different (self-)reinforcing processes. In the
Oudomsin case study area, the first years of the rubber boom were
marked by village-level decisions to convert village forests. This shows
that the village was an important decision-making arena, and indeed
villages with higher level of cooperation, such as the Akha villages,
adopted more rubber. Village-level decisions were self-reinforcing me-
chanisms because they drew households to adoption who would have
otherwise not adopted, or not so early, and thus exacerbated the rush
for land – itself an important self-reinforcing mechanism in the Ou-
domsin area. Strict enforcement of shifting cultivation regulations and
opium eradication measures (policy triggers), combined with a higher
population density, also intensified the rush for land in Oudomsin.
Furthermore, we find that one of the most important self-reinforcing
mechanisms was the drive to “be like the others”, discussed below.
4.2. Information and normative components in knowledge-based and
imitation-based behavior
We dichotomize the motives behind rubber adoption as knowledge-
based, versus based on “mere” imitation or “following”. Imitation

10
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
played a large role in rubber adoption decisions in both case study areas
(see also Pomp and Burger, 1995). Self-reinforcing mechanisms such as
imitation, the rush for land, and village-level decisions not only main-
tained the new regime (Ramankutty and Coomes, 2016), but are also
critical to explain the intensity (speed and extent) of the boom.
Our results suggest normativity and conformity in imitation beha-
vior – indicating that doing what others do, and having what others
have, was a goal in itself. This may be explained in part by the fact that
East Asian cultures value group norms and goals highly (Wong and
Ahuvia, 1998). More generally, pursuing peer validation and avoiding
social isolation helps explain conformity in behavior (Levine et al.,
2015) and was specifically mentioned by some respondents as a moti-
vation for adoption. Imitation influenced not only the decision to adopt,
but also how much to plant. In Prang, the norm among adopters was to
plant about one hectare of rubber per household. In Oudomsin, the
norm was to “plant as much as possible”, thus intensifying the boom.
Many knowledge-based adoption decisions were based on “seeing
others get rich” or being “told that rubber will make you rich and feed a
whole family”, often transmitted through kinship networks. There are
several elements at play in relatives’ “success stories”, which make
them particularly persuasive. Social distance has an impact on the effect
people have on each other (Akerloff, 1997) and information coming
from trusted sources, such as family and friends, may have a higher
influence on adoption decisions (Bandiera and Rasul, 2006). Success
stories also transmit tangible information about a new technology or
crop, lowering uncertainty and, in the case of “favorable observations”,
providing reinforcement (Bandura, 1971) and raising the probability of
adoption (Besley and Case, 1994; Busch and Vance, 2011; Pomp and
Burger, 1995; Sunding and Zilberman, 2001).
Beyond the informational aspect, there was a normative component
to knowledge-based behavior. Similar to Sturgeon (2013) and Lagerqvist
(2013), we find that many respondents wanted to become “rich like their
relatives”. These ideas of prosperity (Montefrio et al., 2014) transmitted
by relatives can be interpreted as constituting not only new knowledge,
but also new values (affluence becomes a new socially desirable goal)
and norms (being affluent becomes the new norm). Communication in
cross-border social networks is thus comparable to the transmission of
knowledge, ideas, values and beliefs, or “social remittances”, in migrant
networks (Levitt, 1998). If decisions are influenced by actors’ guiding set
of rules, values, and knowledge (Colloff et al., 2017; Gorddard et al.,
2016), new values and norms coupled with new knowledge may accel-
erate and amplify decisions (Clement and Amezaga, 2008).
Hence, we argue that both knowledge-based and imitation-based
behavior had an information as well as a normative element. Further,
we find that social networks helped to spread both of these components.
This is in line with the common notion in psychology that social in-
fluence has a normative and an informational component (Deutsch and
Gerard, 1955; Kaplan and Miller, 1987).
While we make a clear distinction between knowledge-based and
imitation-based behavior in our analysis, it can also be argued that
there is not a clear dividing line between the two. Households who
adopted rubber because they witnessed others benefitting economically
from the crop and made a reasoned decision to pursue the same eco-
nomic strategy can be considered “social learners”. Answers indicating
imitation without knowledge, or “merely following”, can be ascribed to
“herd behavior”. In practice, many households who expressed a rea-
soned decision to adopt rubber also mentioned the fact that “everyone
was planting”. While a clear-cut separation of knowledge-based and
imitation-based decisions is useful to our analysis, we propose more
generally that household decisions lay across a two-dimensional con-
tinuum between knowledge–imitation on one axis, and in-
formation–normativity on the other one.
Our results both confirm and counter assumptions and findings
stated in the agricultural innovation adoption and diffusion literature.
We find evidence of learning and network externalities such as forest
road construction (Besley and Case, 1993). Our results also confirm that
11
Global Environmental Change 57 (2019) 101929
adoption decisions are affected by farm and farmer characteristics, are
contingent on the behavior of others, and are partly based on expected
profit (Besley and Case, 1994, 1993; Sunding and Zilberman, 2001).
Most adoption literature, however, understands social influence ex-
clusively or mainly as serving to overcome informational asymmetries, in
particular related to profitability (e.g., Besley and Case, 1994, 1993;
Busch and Vance, 2011; Sunding and Zilberman, 2001), and sometimes
specifically rules out mimicry or “mere following” as an important driver
of adoption decisions (Bandiera and Rasul, 2006). Our results do not
confirm these statements: while we find that early adopters were more
likely to make knowledge-based decisions, we also find that normative
and imitation-driven behavior was relevant throughout the boom, and
was a significant reinforcing mechanism. Our findings highlight the
confluence of knowledge, imitation, informational and normative ele-
ments in decision-making and thus counter the notion of decisions
mainly based on profit or utility maximization implicit or explicit in large
part of the cited adoption literature.
This study has a number of limitations. First, pre-boom household
agricultural area and income are subject to large uncertainty. Thus,
regression analyses cannot disentangle to what extent Prang households
planted less rubber compared to Oudomsin simply because they were
poorer. Second, the study relies on respondents’ self-assessment of
adoption motivations in an open-ended question format rather than on
a formal social network analysis. In addition, the answers provide in-
formation about the reasons for adopting rubber but not about the
reasons for subsequent expansion. We also did not ask why households
did not plant rubber (e.g., before, or at all in the case of non-adopters),
which limits the adequacy of this approach for understanding motiva-
tions underlying behavior (Westaby et al., 1997). Despite the short-
comings of our approach, qualitative self-reporting of adoption moti-
vations has a number of advantages over a strictly quantitative “count”
of adoption decisions, such as easy interpretability, richness of in-
formation, causal force, and practicality (Paulhus and Vazire, 2007), as
well as comparability with similar studies. Finally, while self-reported
adoption motivations do not fully reveal the role of institutional and
political dynamics that influenced such decisions, we have attempted to
embed our findings to the best of our knowledge within the complex
structural and historical context that characterizes the study region.
5. Conclusions
Crop booms in forest frontiers are significant contributors to global
change by inducing rapid, non-linear and unpredictable change from
natural or extensive to intensive land systems. This underscores the
importance of understanding the dynamics of such land system regime
shifts. While economic and policy triggers help explain the timing of the
smallholder-led expansion of rubber in northern Laos, the boom-like
aspect of this expansion cannot be understood strictly in terms of
changing economic conditions and land use policies. Both case study
areas analyzed were exposed to similar market and policy triggers, but
only one underwent a boom-like expansion of rubber.
The northern Laos rubber boom is also to be understood as a process
of homogenization through social ties: villages with cross-border con-
nections, but also socially connected villagers, strove to attain similar
ends through similar means. The mechanism through which this hap-
pened was the spread of new information and norms. Whether boom-like
or more controlled, the spread of rubber had its origin in knowledge-
based as well as imitation-based decisions. These exchanges and deci-
sions occurred at multiple levels that are reflective of the social ties that
were at their origin, namely within households, but especially within and
between geographically and socially connected villages and villagers.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the people in Luang Namtha
who patiently answered our questions; our project partners at the
V. Junquera and A. Grêt-Regamey
Faculty of Forestry, National University of Laos, and in particular
Khamla Phanvilay, Sithong Thongmanivong, Thoumthone Vongvisouk,
Phokham Latthachack, and Daovorn Thongphanh, for their project and
logistical support, and research collaboration; research assistants
Phonsak, Kham Tuang, Bounsing, and Sengchan; M. Ingalls for his help
in quantifying rubber plantation and agricultural area in Luang
Namtha; A. Kohler, J. Burren, and D. Wüpper for their advice on sta-
tistical analysis; and Y. le Polain de Waroux, P. Meyfroidt, S. Huber, C.
Ornetsmüller, M. van Strien, A. Stritih, and two anonymous reviewers
for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript. This
work was supported by the Swiss Programme for Research on Global
Issues for Development (R4D Programme), funded by the Swiss
National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation (SDC), grant number 400440152167.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the
online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.
101929.
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