Group Influences and Agricultural Innovations: Some Tentative Findings and Hypotheses

Kentucky research on group influences in the acceptance of agricultural innovations shows wide variation among the neighborhoods of a single county in the adoption of new practices and supports the hypothesis that norms in some neighborhoods are more favorable to their acceptance than those in other neighborhoods. In areas favorable to new techniques, those farmers from whom other farmers obtain information show higher rates of adoption than farmers in general; but in areas less favorable to inovation, the adoption rates of leadersare similar to adoption rates of farmers in general. Thus group norms in the one case tend to accelerate change, and in the other they may retard it.