270,805 research outputs found
The diffusion of innovative technologies among elementary and middle School teachers: Examining the relationship between access to social capital and level of technology adoption
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between public school elementary and middle school teachers’ access to social capital (the independent variable) and their level of adoption of innovative technologies (the dependent variable). The study was founded on both diffusion of innovations and social network theory.
Study participants were teachers from three schools, sharing two buildings in a single school district. The initial phase of the research involved informal interviews with key policy makers from each school, conducted for the purpose of identifying innovative technologies present at each study site. An existing survey instrument was modified and customized for each site to measure the study variables. Data were collected during a single sampling date at each site. A census of all teachers was attempted, and data were collected from 82% of possible respondents at the three schools.
The results of this phase of the study revealed that multiple innovative technologies were present at each site. Variation existed in both the level of adoption of innovative technologies as well as the teachers’ access to social capital at each site. These results were consistent across subgroups based on gender, teaching assignment (academic or elective), and grade level (elementary or middle school). A strong, positive correlation was found between the study variables at all study sites and included nearly all the innovative technologies. An investigation of respondents’ age, teaching experience and years assigned to the study site revealed no significant impacts on the dependent variable.
Based on these findings, it was concluded that teachers’ access to social capital was the primary factor impacting the level of adoption of innovative technologies at each site. Recommendations were presented including recognizing that innovative technologies exist within schools and that the necessary knowledge, help, and support teachers require in learning to use innovative technologies may be present within the existing social network present in schools
Adoption Differentials and Benefits of Improved Rice Production Technologies among Farmers in Ebonyi State of Nigeria
This study was undertaken to investigate adoption differentials and benefits of improved rice production technologies among farmers in Ebonyi State of Nigeria. Multi-stage random and systematic sampling techniques were used to select a total of 240 (two hundred and forty) rice farmers from the three agricultural zones of the State. Primary data were sourced directly from the rice farmers and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The result of data analysis indicates that most of the rice farmers adopted soil improving technologies such as use of agrochemicals (X = 3.3), zero tillage (X = 3.2), fertilizer application (X = 3.1) whereas, improved processing (X = 2.1) and use of modern rice milling (X = 2.0 were the least adopted. Further analysis reveals that most of the farmers sourced information on improved rice production technologies from extension agents (80%), fellow farmers/ neighbours (75.83%), and ADP contact farmers (66.67%). Agricultural shows (18.33%) and meetings (17.5%) were the least sources of information. The result of multiple regression analysis revealed an R2 of 0.678 and adjusted R2 of 0.591. All the independent variables were positively signed and statistically significant; indicating that they greatly influenced the dependent variables. The null hypotheses indicate significant differences between yield, income, level of living of the rice farmers before and after adoption. It was concluded that low production of rice in the study area was due to low technology adoption. Recommendations such as formation of rice farmers into cooperative societies and complementing recommended technology package with sources of inputs were made, among others. Keywords: Adoption, Rice Farmers, Improved Rice Technologies, Ebonyi State, Nigeri
The Role of Citizens’ Familiarity, Privacy Concerns, and Trust on Adoption of Smart Services
Smart city solutions and applications are considered as a strategic means to cope with multiple global and local challenges such as pollution, energy expenditure and digitalization to name a few. Although these solutions are driven by advanced information technologies such as IoT and Big data, their success is dependent on user engagement and trust. We seek to examine how citizens' awareness and perception of smart cities affect their adoption of smart services.To answer this, we conducted a study in Norway and employed a questionnairereceiving 103 responses. Furthermore, we conducted 12 semi-structured interviewsto obtain further insights. The results show how citizens value the benefitof smart services and how their adoption is influences by engagement and trusttowards them.
Norm-based and commitment-driven agentification of the Internet of Things
There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses different IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed
Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations
This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social
media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity,
governance, and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100
large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the
determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: 1) adoption, 2)
frequency of use, and 3) dialogue. We find that organizational strategies,
capacities, governance features, and external pressures all play a part in
these social media adoption and utilization outcomes. Through its integrated,
multi-disciplinary theoretical perspective, this study thus helps foster
understanding of which types of organizations are able and willing to adopt and
juggle multiple social media accounts, to use those accounts to communicate
more frequently with their external publics, and to build relationships with
those publics through the sending of dialogic messages.Comment: Seungahn Nah and Gregory D. Saxton. (in press). Modeling the adoption
and use of social media by nonprofit organizations. New Media & Society,
forthcomin
Electronic government procurement adoption behavior amongst Malaysian SMEs
The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between a model of electronic procurement (e-procurement)
adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst Small Medium Enterprise (SME) in Malaysia. Data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed to SME selected randomly in all SME in Malaysia.The data were analyzed using factor analysis, reliability analysis, independent-sample t-test, descriptive
statistics, Pearson Correlation and multiple regressions. Regression results reveals that ‘power’, ‘trust’ and ‘value’
have a positive relationship with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia.All dimensions, namely; the power of supplier, power of procurement, trust on supplier, trust on information technology, value of implementation system efficiency and value of cost efficiency were also correlated with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME. Past studies on e-procurement are beset by problems of buyer-seller relationship perspective.In addition, these studies are skewed towards Government-SME relationship perspective which the Government possesses more power than SME and provide a better incentive to educate and influence SME to adopt e-procurement.In investigation the relationship between a model of e-procurement adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia, this study also tries to provides recommendation to Malaysian government for improving the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME
Can Network Theory-based Targeting Increase Technology Adoption?
In order to induce farmers to adopt a productive new agricultural technology,
we apply simple and complex contagion diffusion models on rich social network
data from 200 villages in Malawi to identify seed farmers to target and train
on the new technology. A randomized controlled trial compares these
theory-driven network targeting approaches to simpler strategies that either
rely on a government extension worker or an easily measurable proxy for the
social network (geographic distance between households) to identify seed
farmers. Our results indicate that technology diffusion is characterized by a
complex contagion learning environment in which most farmers need to learn from
multiple people before they adopt themselves. Network theory based targeting
can out-perform traditional approaches to extension, and we identify methods to
realize these gains at low cost to policymakers.
Keywords: Social Learning, Agricultural Technology Adoption, Complex
Contagion, Malawi
JEL Classification Codes: O16, O13Comment: 61 page
Innovation attributes and managers' decisions about the adoption of innovations in organizations: A meta-analytical review
The adoption of innovations has emerged as a dominant research topic in the management of innovation in organizations, although investigations often yield mixed results. To help managers and researchers improve their effectiveness, the authors employed a meta-analysis integrated with structural equation modeling to analyze the associations between the attributes of innovations, managers' behavioral preferences, and organizations' innovation adoption decisions in a mediated-moderated framework. Our findings offer evidence that attributes of innovations influence managers' behavioral preferences and, consequently, adoption decisions in organizations. We also observe the significance of the context in which the adoption decision occurs as well as the research settings employed by scholars. Finally, we discuss the theoretical contribution and practical implications of our meta-analytical results
Adoption of soil organic carbon-enhancing practices: A case of two watershed sites in Ethiopia.
This study aimed at identifying the factors that determine
the decision to adopt and the intensity of adoption of
soil organic carbon (SOC)-enhancing practices using two
watershed sites in Ethiopia: Yiser (Amhara region) and
Azugashube (Southern region). The study used survey
data collected from 379 sample households drawn from
four Kebele/village administrations at each watershed
site. Multivariate and ordinary least squares regressions
were used to identify the factors that determine the
decision to adopt the SOC-enhancing practices and the
factors that determine the extent of adoption of these
practices, respectively. The study classified these various
practices into three classes: soil and water conservation,
agronomic, and agroforestry SOC-enhancing practices.
We find that the decision to adopt soil and water
conservation practices is negatively related to both the
decision to adopt agronomic and to adopt agroforestry
SOC-enhancing practices. On the contrary, we find
that the decision to adopt agronomic and agroforestry
practices is complementary. The study also identified
diverse agroecological, farming system, institutional, and
household characteristics that determine the decision to
adopt and the intensity of adoption of the three SOCenhancing
practices. Among the different variables, the
study found location as a strong determinant of the type
and intensity of adoption of the SOC practices
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The influence of national culture on the attitude towards mobile recommender systems
This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This study aimed to identify factors that influence user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems and to examine how these factors interact with cultural values to affect attitudes towards this technology. Based on the theory of reasoned action, belief factors for mobile recommender systems are identified in three dimensions: functional, contextual, and social. Hypotheses explaining different impacts of cultural values on the factors affecting attitudes were also proposed. The research model was tested based on data collected in China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Findings indicate that functional and social factors have significant impacts on user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems. The relationships between belief factors and attitudes are moderated by two cultural values: collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. The theoretical and practical implications of applying theory of reasoned action and innovation diffusion theory to explain the adoption of new technologies in societies with different cultures are also discussed.National Research Foundation
of Korea Grant funded by the Korean governmen
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