Labor mobility and technology diffusion: A new concept and its application to rural Southeast Asia

•Labor mobility and business relations support rural technology diffusion.•They help overcome geographic obstacles to rural development.•Technology gain vs. technology drain effect of labor mobility.•Technology, measured by mobile phones, subject to spatial correlation.•Concept applied to village-level survey data from the Mekong region.

We develop a new concept of rural technology diffusion influenced by labor mobility and business relations. The technology gain effect of labor mobility increases technology diffusion, whereas the technology drain effect decreases it. The concept is applied to survey data from the Mekong region, a new geographic area in this context. In the econometric analysis, which takes spatial correlation and geographic variables into account, technology is measured in the form of the number of mobile phones per village. The results support the technology gain and drain effects and show that labor mobility and business relations can help overcome geographic obstacles to rural development.