Communal Innovations : Inspiring Neighborhoods of Hope and Advocacy

Innovations promise a better future, which may generate feelings of hope and inspire advocacy. Some innovations are more communal in nature: attempting to address a social problem, through community engagement and wide-spread adoption. For such innovations, the social processes that involve collective aspects of community life may play important roles in fostering hope and interpersonal advocacy. This study uses communication infrastructure theory and discrete emotions theory to investigate hope and advocacy within a field trial for a salient, visible, community-bound innovation to reduce transmission of malaria. Heads of households in one community (N = 119) in West Africa were interviewed. Results showed that innovation hope was predicted by appraisals of innovation attributes. Better appraisals of the innovation's attributes, greater perceived collective efficacy, and recent malaria illness predicted more innovation advocacy. The spatial analysis showed that innovation advocacy was geographically clustered within the community, but hope was not. The implications for theory and practice are discussed

Integrating Models of Diffusion and Behavior to Predict Innovation Adoption, Maintenance, and Social Diffusion

This study documents an investigation into the adoption and diffusion of eave tubes, a novel mosquito vector control, during a large-scale scientific field trial in West Africa. The diffusion of innovations (DOI) and the integrated model of behavior (IMB) were integrated (i.e., innovation attributes with attitudes and social pressures with norms) to predict participants’ (N = 329) diffusion intentions. The findings showed that positive attitudes about the innovation’s attributes were a consistent positive predictor of diffusion intentions: adopting it, maintaining it, and talking with others about it. As expected by the DOI and the IMB, the social pressure created by a descriptive norm positively predicted intentions to adopt and maintain the innovation. Drawing upon sharing research, we argued that the descriptive norm may dampen future talk about the innovation, because it may no longer be seen as a novel, useful topic to discuss. As predicted, the results showed that as the descriptive norm increased, the intention to talk about the innovation decreased. These results provide broad support for integrating the DOI and the IMB to predict diffusion and for efforts to draw on other research to understand motivations for social diffusion

Inspiration by Role Models: The Effect of Source Similarity, Perceived Goal Attainability, and Dispositional Optimism

Our experiences on social network sites (SNS) can often leave us envious of others, but others’ success can be inspirational as well. This study was an exploration of how source similarity, dispositional optimism, and goal attainability influence the outcomes of upward social comparisons with outstanding others. In an experiment in which participants were exposed to a success story on SNS (N = 200), source similarity was found to have a direct influence on inspiration, and dispositional optimism had an indirect influence on inspiration through perceived goal attainability. The findings provide both theoretical and practical implications regarding how best to utilize success stories on SNS to increase a sense of inspiration