USA: College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D12123
Notes:
Via online research summary. 4 pages., Summary of a research project among rural and urban residents in the Upper Sangamon River Watershed in central Illinois to learn how much people care about local water quality, fish populations, and algae blooms, and how much they care about meeting Environmental Protection Agency targets which benefit the Gulf of Mexico. Responses indicated that rural and urban residents value efforts to reduce watershed pollution and are willing to pay for environmental improvements.
14 pages, via online journal, Water quality is a complex issue and residential fertilizer can be one of the many contributors to poor water quality. Working with residential audiences to help them understand and reduce their impacts on water quality is an important task among many agricultural education and Extension professionals. In order to effectively work with residential audiences, we must first understand what influences their intent to engage in fertilizer best management practices. In this research, we paired the Diffusion of Innovations and Elaboration Likelihood Model to examine the influence of perceptions of an innovation’s characteristics, personal involvement with water, and communication on intent to engage in fertilizer best management practices. The communication was presented to experimental groups as a 35-second video about fertilizer best management practices. Data were collected via a survey instrument and were analyzed using inferential procedures. Four of the five characteristics of innovations significantly influenced intent to engage in fertilizer best management practices among the control group. However, all five characteristics were significant among the entire sample but the influence was less compared to the control group. Involvement increased intent while the video treatments had little effect. The results of the research support existing findings, but also offer areas of new discovery as well as insights for practice and additional study. Future research should examine the repetition of communication as well as different dimensions of involvement.
