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Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective

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 e...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ranjan, Pranay, Witter, Jonathan D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062265/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32150597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229969
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author Ranjan, Pranay
Witter, Jonathan D.
author_facet Ranjan, Pranay
Witter, Jonathan D.
author_sort Ranjan, Pranay
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-70622652020-03-23 Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective Ranjan, Pranay Witter, Jonathan D. PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2020-03-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7062265/ /pubmed/32150597 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229969 Text en © 2020 Ranjan, Witter http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ranjan, Pranay
Witter, Jonathan D.
Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title_full Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title_fullStr Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title_full_unstemmed Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title_short Promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: A change agent perspective
title_sort promoting adoption of two-stage agricultural drainage ditches: a change agent perspective
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062265/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32150597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229969
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