The role of network characteristics of the innovation spreaders in agriculture

Abstract

The diffusion of innovations is largely influenced by the characteristics of the network of initial adopters (or innovation spreader). We investigate how these characteristics tend to influence the adoption rate and the speed of the diffusion process of a technological innovation in agriculture. The diffusion process is simulated through an Agent Based Model that replicates real-world data. We found that the closeness and the clusterization of the networks are the variables that tend to affect the most the capability of spreading innovations among members. Our findings have direct policy implications: since innovations help advancing the economic development of the agricultural sector, promoting the emergence of networks that have desirable characteristics would enhance growth. Our analysis provides specific insights on how to plan networks with desirable characteristics for the innovation spreaders.