CHEN, CHAO-LANG; PHD
 
                         THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, 1983

                         ECONOMICS, AGRICULTURAL (0503)
 

                         The purpose of this study is to examine the adoption behavior of agricultural technology and factors
                         affecting technological innovation in the context of Taiwanese farming industry. The basic research
                         design in this study is cross-sectional and allows for ascertaining the relationship between the
                         characteristics of farmers and their innovative-adoption behavior of blasticides. Multiple regression
                         analysis was used to assess the extent to which the blasticide adoption behavior could be explained by
                         some important independent variables. Path analysis was used to ascertain the cause-effect
                         relationships among the variables. The factor stratification was used to verify the institutional constraints
                         on adoption of innovations. Data were collected from interviews of 450 farmers based on a multi-stage
                         sample. Results of this study conclude that the traditional diffusion model is probably applicable to
                         Taiwanese farmers and is useful in examining farmers' adoption behavior, specifically in the context of
                         individual behavior, low technology and commercially profitable innovation. In addition, findings of this
                         study clearly demonstrate that attitudinal and communication variables are better predictors of adopting
                         new farm technologies than are the farmers' role and organizational variables. But among these four
                         clusters of independent variables, only organizational variables--especially farm environmental
                         variables--are the best predictor of yield per unit, defined as the consequence of adoption. The
                         institutional constraints analysis reveals that structural variables have only a marginal impact on the
                         traditional adoption model for Taiwanese farmers; but those factors have important impact on yield per
                         unit. The findings seemingly suggest that more complex theories than the traditional diffusion model for
                         the institutional constraints model should be explored and used in future studies.

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