Attitudes and social categories: complementary explanations of innovation-adoption behavior

This paper explores the relationships between an individual's attitudes toward innovation adoption, his or her social category with respect to adoption, and innovation-adoption behavior. First the paper describes how attitudes and social categories can theoretically be linked to innovation adoption, and proposes a comprehensive model in which the two sets of variables are viewed as explaining both unique and common variance in adoption behavior. The paper then empirically examines the intercorrelations of attitudes, social categories, and innovation adoption in a real-world situation: the diffusion of five agricultural innovations in a portion of Appalachian Ohio, The results indicate that some attitudes are significantly related to social categories, whereas others are not; both sets of variables are highly associated with innovation adoption, but attitudes more so than social categories; finally, each set of variables explains some unique aspects of innovation adoption. Thus the findings suggest that comprehensive behavioral models must include psychological as well as socioeconomic and locational variables.