Socio-economic factors affecting the level of adoption of innovations in dairy cattle enterprises

Abstract

This research was conducted to determine the socio-economic factors which are effective in helping dairy cattle enterprises to adopt some innovations in Afyonkarahisar. The data acquired from questionnaires of 80 randomly selected enterprises were analyzed with chi-square test in May 2006. Enterprises those have 1-10, 11-35 and more than 35 cattle were classified as small, medium and high scale, respectively. It was found that 12% of enterprises adopt innovations at low level, 65% of them at medium level and 23% of them at high level. Consequently, a parallel relationship was determined between adopting innovations and the scale of the enterprises (p<0.01), education level and age of the producer (p<0.05), his work experience (p<0.05), his standard of living (p<0.05), his participation in social life, his level of being open to outer cultures, his ability of empathy and his level of using mass media tools (p<0.01), but no relationship was seen between main occupation of the producer, type of his family and the milk production level of the enterprises (p>0.05).