RedRoads asks:
Ever thought that an Australian farmer not adopting your latest good idea (particularly when your good idea is a service) is just plain dumb?
Don’t let the flannel shirt fool you. If growers are not buying it ask the question: does my explanation of its usefulness demonstrate a believable positive outcome?
The literature suggests that you may be wrong. See below an exert from a study that concluded that the reason for slow uptake of many so called innovations is the fault of those promoting it, and that while farmers may not appear to make decisions like someone formally trained in managerial-economics many instinctively go through a similar information analysing process.
Adopter categories – characteristics
Rogers (1983) argued that depending on the level of innovativeness of an individual within a social system that farmers could be segmented into adopter categorise according to how quickly they implemented a new technology (Figure 2.2). Communication behaviours, personality variables, and socioeconomic characteristics could be used to make predictions about an individual’s likely adoption behaviour. While an extension officer (or marketer of a new product) may not be able to change the characteristics of an individual, this model may be useful in targeting product launches at those likely to adopt early. The reliability of predicting the adoption of innovations based on the characteristics of farmers as modeled by Rogers (1983) has been questioned by numerous researchers. (Guerin and Guerin 1994; Reid, Coulson and Cameron 1996) point out that the model was embedded in the paradigm that technologies developed by scientists would be inherently good for farmers, and that they should adopt was a matter of course. Figure 2.2: Adopter Categorisation on the Basis of Innovativeness