Feder, Gershon (author), Just, Richard E. (author), and Zilberman, David (author)
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
1982
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 51 Document Number: C00566
Notes:
AgComm Teaching, Washington, D.C. : The World Bank, 1982. 65 p. (World Bank Staff Working papers No. 542), Reviews various studies which have provided a description of and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector. Covers both empirical and theoretical studies. Highlights the diversity in observed patterns among various farmers' classes as well as difference in results from different studies in different socio-economic environments, and reviews the attempts to rationalize such findings. Special attention is given to the methodologies which are commonly used in studies of innovation adoption and suggestions for improvements of such work through the use of appropriate econometric methods are provided.
This article traces the emergence of the basic paradigm for early diffusion research created by two rural sociologists at Iowa State University, Bryce Ryan and Neal C. Gross. The diffusion paradigm spread to an invisible college of midwestern rural sociological researchers in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to a larger, interdisciplinary field of diffusion scholars. By the late 1960s, rural sociologists lost interest in diffusion studies, not because it was ineffective scientifically, but because of lack of support for such study as a consequence of farm overproduction and because most of the interesting research questions were thought to be answered."
