Farm Context and Farmers’ Perceptions of the Compatibility, Complexity and Relative Advantage of Innovations

Geoff Kaine () and Vic Wright
Additional contact information
Geoff Kaine: Manaaki Whenua–Landcare Research, Hamilton 2340, New Zealand
Vic Wright: UNE Business School, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia

Agriculture, 2025, vol. 15, issue 17, 1-17

Abstract: Agriculture is under increasing pressure to change practices and technologies due to climate change, market forces and community pressures. The strongest influences on farmers’ adoption of practices and technologies are their perceptions of the relevant benefits and costs. Differences in the fine-grained characteristics of farm systems can lead to diversity in farmers’ perceptions. Where this is the case, the rate of adoption is best increased through product development rather than promotion. The extent to which differences in the characteristics of farm systems translate into diversity in farmers’ perceptions of innovations has rarely been explored. Our purpose was to investigate whether the diversity in farmers’ perceptions of practices correlated with fine-grained differences in the characteristics of their farm systems using survey data on four management practices used by livestock farmers in New Zealand. We found that the diversity in farmers’ perceptions did correlate with subtle differences in a variety of characteristics of farm systems. This result has important implications for research, extension and policy.

Keywords: adaptation; adoption; farm systems; agricultural policy; agricultural extension; natural resource policy; agricultural innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/17/1841/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/17/1841/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:15:y:2025:i:17:p:1841-:d:1737492

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().