Title: Adoption of innovation in agriculture: a critical review of economic and psychological models

Authors: João Augusto Rossi Borges; Alfons G.J.M. Oude Lansink; Grigorios Emvalomatis

Addresses: Faculdade de Administracão, Ciências Contábeis e Economia, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados (UFGD), Rodovia Dourados-Itam Km 12, Caixa Postal – 364, 79804-970 Dourados (MS), Brazil ' Business Economics Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, P.O. Box 8130, 6706 KN, Wageningen, The Netherlands ' School of Business, University of Dundee, 3 Perth Rd, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland

Abstract: Two main models have been used to analyse farmers' decisions to adopt an innovation; the first is based on the concept of utility maximisation (UM) and the second is based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). This study uses a vote-count method to identify the effect of different variables on farmers' adoption decisions in 36 studies using either UM or the TPB. Results from the UM studies show that the explanatory variables mostly have an insignificant effect on the adoption decision. When the effects are significant, the sign of the effect is inconsistent across studies. Results from the TPB studies show that correlations between the psychological constructs used in this type of model are significant in most cases. However, most variables are only used in one or two studies and it is therefore not possible to detect a clear pattern across studies that used the TPB model.

Keywords: adoption; farmer; innovation; utility; decision; agriculture; TRA; theory of reasoned action; TPB; theory of planned behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISD.2019.096705

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2019 Vol.13 No.1, pp.36 - 56

Received: 16 Jan 2016
Accepted: 19 Sep 2016
Published online: 10 Dec 2018 *

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