Abstract
Adoption of innovations, including adoption of conservation practices, is a topic of extensive scholarly enterprise. The diffusion of innovations literature has often examined the characteristics of three sets of variables: the adopter, the change agent, and the innovation. This literature clearly establishes the crucial role of change agents in promoting an innovation. However, what we don’t know is what makes change agents want to promote a particular innovation. In this study, change agents’ perceptions of the attributes of two-stage drainage ditches, an innovative agricultural drainage ditch design, are examined in order to understand what affects their willingness to promote them. Diffusion of innovation theory provides the conceptual grounding as well as the theoretical motivation for this study. The data for this study come from semi-structured interviews with 17 change agents. Results suggest that change agents perceive the relative advantage associated with two-stage ditches to be low, and that two-stage ditches might be perceived by potential adopters to be incompatible with the prevalent sociocultural beliefs about drainage ditch management. Results also indicate that change agents’ perceptions of environmental benefits of adopting two-stage ditches affects their willingness to promote them. Results are more broadly informative about promoting conservation practices, and is relevant for both academicians and practitioners.
Highlights
Introduction & rationaleAn innovation is defined as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” [1]
The objective of this study is to examine change agents’ perceptions of the attributes of two-stage ditches, an innovative agricultural drainage ditch design, and examine what affects their willingness to promote it
The first two sections focus on change agents’ perceived relative advantages/disadvantages, and tangibility and immediacy of benefits associated with two-stage ditches
Summary
An innovation is defined as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” [1]. Conservation practices are a classic, oft studied, example of innovations designed to alleviate problems associated with nonpoint source pollution from agricultural runoff [2]. Decades of scholarly work on adoption of conservation practices, grounded in the diffusion of innovations literature, has examined characteristics of three primary sets of variables: the adopter, the change agent, and the innovation. Much scholarly work has focused on identifying factors that lead farmers to adopt conservation practices [3,4]. A review of thirty-five years of quantitative literature on adoption of conservation practices found that, among others, farmers’ seeking and using information, and their awareness of conservation practices, positively influenced adoption [5].
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