Quotes from Everett M. Rogers

Even though the software component of a technology is often not so easy to observe, we should not forget that technology almost always represents a mixture of hardware and software aspects. According to our definition, technology is a means of uncertainty reduction that is made possible by information about the cause-effect relationships on which the technology is based.

Relative advantage is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes.

Compatibility is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters.

The five attributes of innovations are (1) relative advantage, (2) compatibility, (3) complexity, (4) trialability, and (5) observability.

Complexity is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use.

Trialability is the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis.

Observability is the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others.

Innovations that are perceived by individuals as having greater relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, and less complexity will be adopted more rapidly than other innovations.

Thus we see that the diffusion of innovations is a social process, even more than a technical matter.

The more we know about how to do something, the harder it is to learn how to do it differently

A technology cluster consists of one or more distinguishable elements of technology that are perceived as being closely interrelated.

While consumer innovations like mobile telephones or VCRs may require only a few years to reach widespread adoption in the United States, other new ideas such as the metric system or using seat belts in cars require decades to reach complete use. The characteristics of innovations, as perceived by individuals, help to explain their different rate of adoption.

The degree of relative advantage may be measured in economic terms, but social prestige, convenience, and satisfaction are also important factors.

In 1972, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DDT as an insecticide because of its threats to human health.

An example of an incompatible innovation is the use of contraceptive methods in countries where religious beliefs discourage use of family planning, as in Moslem and Catholic nations.

For example, the villagers in Los Molinas did not understand germ theory, which the health worker tried to explain to them as a reason for boiling their drinking water.

Ryan and Gross (1943) found that every one of their Iowa farmer respondents adopted hybrid seed corn by first trying it on a partial basis.

Solar adopters often are found in neighborhood clusters in California, with three or four adopters located on the same block. Other consumer innovations like home computers are relatively less observable, and thus diffuse more slowly.

In the 1970s, diffusion scholars began to study the concept of reinvention, defined as the degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the process of its adoption and implementation.

At its most elementary form, the process involves (1) an innovation, (2) an individual or other unit of adoption that has knowledge of the innovation or experience with using it, (3) another individual or other unit that does not yet have experience with the innovation, and (4) a communication channel connecting the two units. A communication channel is the means by which messages get from one individual to another.

Diffusion investigations show that most individuals do not evaluate an innovation on the basis of scientific studies of its consequences, although such objective evaluations are not entirely irrelevant, especially to the very first individuals who adopt. Instead, most people depend mainly upon a subjective evaluation of an innovation that is conveyed to them from other individuals like themselves who have previously adopted the innovation

More effective communication occurs when two or more individuals are homophilous.III When they share common meanings, a mutual subcultural language, and are alike in personal and social characteristics, the communication of new ideas is likely to have greater effects in terms of knowledge gain, attitude formation and change, and overt behavior change.

An important factor regarding the adoption rate of an innovation is its compatibility with the values, beliefs, and past experiences of individuals in the social system.

This tendency for more effective communication to occur with those who are more similar to a change agent occurs in most diffusion campaigns. Unfortunately, those individuals who most need the help provided by the change agent are least likely to accept it.