Browsing by Subject "Innovationen"

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    Sozio-ökonomische Beurteilung von Innovationen: Untersuchungen über die Innovationenakzeptanz auf Betriebs-Haushaltsebene in Niger
    (2004) Haigis, Jörg; Heidhues, Franz
    The presented research study deals with the question, which socio- economic and personal characteristics of the heads of household as the main decision persons within the nigerian farm-household-systems influence significantly their adoption behaviour. Simultaneous innovation adoption of thirteen selected different new technologies were in the focus of the study. The study emphasizes especially the time of the adoption state, which could be observed for all considered innovations by all investigated heads of household at a certain reference point of time. The reference point of time is the year 1995. The analysis of the selected farm-household-systems produced an erratic use for most of the thirteen considered innovations over time until first adoption. Simultaneously the adoption behaviour of the household chiefs show a distinct regional emphasis in terms of the adopted technology type. These emphasis merely reflect rudimentary the climatical site conditions in the republic of Niger. They correspond only apparently the climate gradient of the research sites. At drier sites there the households favour particularly resource saving innovations, for which an internal input availability exist. In contrast the farmers put their emphasis on the adoption of labour-saving technologies at the climatical favourable sites. With a closer look there are less the climatical conditions which influence this behaviour than local particularities, especially within the farm-household-systems. Above all this particularities are the limited access of agricultural active women to use the household labour force for the work on their fields. Exclusively women cultivate groundnuts in this region. Thereby the groundnut cultivation is the main activity within the crop production. Groundnut production is predominantly for the women a profitable business through processing. Because of these circumstances in this region exist a well funded demand for wage labour to prepare groundnut fields with animal-drawn implements. The temporal discontinuity of an adopted innovation is found especially for external and yearly obtainable inputs. Accordingly the cumulative behaviour of each household chief show a variable mixture of actual, former and never occurred adoption. Five adopter groups can be found within this complex appearing behaviour situation with the help of cluster analysis methods. The group-specific adoption behaviour rises in an order from low until especially innovative. Except of the low innovative household chiefs, each adopter group show a significant technological emphasis in terms of the type of adopted technologies. This emphasis coincide with the regional one. The order of the adoption behaviour does not correspond with the climate gradient. Neither a comparison of the identified adopter groups with variance analysis nor the econometric analysis using a multi-nomial logit-model resulted in a clear finding that personal or socio-economic characteristics of the household chief influence significantly their adoption behaviour. In fact the results of the logistic regression confirm a high dependency from the location for the observable adoption behaviour. The distinct regional division between high and special innovative household heads on the one side opposite to all others indicates a significant influence on the individual adoption behaviour by local and regional factors. But the question could not be resolved in the context of this farm-household-system based study, wherein these factors are in detail. The adoption of technological innovations shows not only a distinct regional emphasis and a partly temporal discontinuity but also it is characterised by an adaptation in terms of the spatial use of adopted technologies. The farmers cultivate their fields not homogeneously over the whole field area. Rather they apply a kind of site-specific cul¬tivation. In doing so they adapt each cropping measure to the site conditions changing on a small-scale within in a field. This spatial adaptation includes also the adopted innovations. The observable adoption behaviour of the household chiefs points up the basic willingness to use new technologies and with it the change of the previous traditional cropping methods. The identified particularities of the innovation adoption confirm on the one hand the significant adaptation ability of the farmers to the particular local and temporal conditions. On the other hand these particularities are an indication of the inadequate adaptation of the recommended innovations. As a result the success of further efforts to modernise the nigerian agricultural farms depends greatly from the stronger consideration of these particularities in the future development and diffusion of new technologies.