Problems and solution of Technology Adoption in Agriculture

1. SELF-EFFICACY IN TECHNOLOGY
ADOPTION
Dr. D. Dutta Roy, Ph.D.
Psychology Research Unit
Indian Statistical Institute
203, B.T. Road, Kolkata – 700 108
E-mail: ddroy@isical.ac.in
http://www.isical. ac.in/~ddroy/invt.html
2-days Sensitization Workshop on ‘Technology
Application in Animal and Fishery Sciences’, ICAR-
ATARI, Kolkata on 17th March 2017.

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4. Thank you
▪ Thank you Dr. Avijit Haldar, Principal Scientist
(Animal Reproduction) ICAR- Agricultural
Technology Application Research Institute
(ATARI), Bhumi Vihar Complex, Block- GB,
Sector- III, Salt Lake, Kolkata- 700097.
▪ Grateful to DR. F. H. RAHMAN, Principal
Scientist, ICAR- Agricultural Technology
Application Research Institute Kolkata.

5. Part-1: Basic Concept

6. What is technology adoption ?
▪ The word technology means knowledge of
techniques.
▪ Technology adoption is cognitive, evaluative and
psychomotor co-ordination or the behaviour.
▪ Cognitive process involves understanding the utility
and operational skills.
▪ Evaluative process implies the attitude towards
technology.
▪ Psychomotor co-ordination includes specific
operations or technique specified actions.

7. Technology dynamics
▪ Techniques are changing with
repeated study on
effectiveness of techniques.
▪ Each technique has specific
life expectancy. Techniques
are developed based on
existing socio-cultural needs
and explored science and
technology.
▪ Therefore, today’s technique
will be obsolete tomorrow.
Ancient fish preservation
Fish drying rack in Norway

8. Technology learning curve
▪ Technology adoption follows principles of
technology skill learning curve.
▪ Progress in skill learning commonly follows an S-
shaped curve, with some measure of skill on the
Y axis and number of trials on the X-axis.
Progress is slow at first, then a subject may
experience a burst of learning that produces a
rapid rise on the graph.
▪ The S-shaped learning curve is most obvious
when someone learns a highly complex task. The
initial part of the curve rises slowly as a person
becomes familiar with basic components of a
skill. The steep ascending phase occurs when
there is enough experience with rudiments or
simple components to start "putting it all
together." Rapid progress follows until the skill
"hits a ceiling" or stabilizes at a high level.

9. Technology Cost
▪ Technology
Adoption depends
on cost.
▪ Newer technology
is costlier than
existing.

10. Self-efficacy in technology adoption
▪ Despite the change, some
people prefer obsolete
techniques. On the other
hand, some people prefer
innovations. Innovation
acceptance depends on
skill learning.
▪ Self-efficacious person
accepts innovation and
diffuses it to others.

11. Part-2: Characteristics of
Self-efficacious person

12. Characteristics of
Self-efficacious person
▪ Having strong beliefs in judgment of own capabilities to
organize and execute courses of action required to attain
designated types of technology.

13. Monitoring the internal and
external task agents
▪ Fishing and Animal husbandry is in unorganized sectors.
But it has own hierarchical system, span of control,
departmentalization, formalization but all are controlled
by internal (fish or livestock quality, fishing or animal
conservation process, leadership ) and external task
agents (dealers, subsidies of the Government,
agricultural technology, consumer attitude and climatic
conditions).
▪ Monitoring changes in the task agents reduces level of
perceived environmental uncertainty. Prolonged
uncertainties and failure to overcome lead to accidents
and faulty decision making.

14. Monitoring
▪ Judgment in
monitoring
capability reduces
uncertainty about
dynamicity and
complexity of
technology used by
task agents.

15. Monitoring by experiment
▪ Self-efficacious
farmers understand
dynamicity and
complexity using
experimental
approach.
▪ Farmer uses
different
psychophysical
methods in fish
selection.

16. Self-regulation
▪ Suicide is one’s failure to adopt self regulation. Regulation of self to
control goal setting prevents farmers from suicide. Unattainable
goal setting leads to suicidal ideation or suicidal intent. Usually,
farmers set unachievable goals. They want four times crop
production. So, they often use excessive fertilizers and pesticides in
lands. Heavy use of pesticides has led to increased resistance in
pests, which in turn has caused substantial crop losses and a slide
into crushing debt. Achievable goals will reduce possible
uncertainties in the task environment and to regulate task agents in
own favor. This will reduce unbearable emotions, feelings and
negative thoughts. Cognitive restructuring can be made by using
cause-effect or fish bone diagram, critical part method or by pareto
analysis.

17. Self-regulation

18. Enactive mastery experiences:
▪ Enactive experience is the process by which
farmers acquire information regarding farming
behavior by the reactions it produces in others.
▪ Range of enactive experience can vary from
explicit reactions, such as verbal praise of
family members, neighbors, local agricultural
trainers, to implicit experience of success in
playing roles of farmers.
▪ Roles enacted by farmers can be understood
by job analysis. Job analysis of farming
includes ten activities seeding, weeding,
irrigating, harvesting, threshing, drying,
milling, storage, product processing and
trading.

19. Vicarious experience
▪ Bandura (1986) suggests that vicarious experience occurs
by observing others perform tasks successfully. Such
experience can be more facilitated by multimedia mode
(VCD, audio, video) of presentation. In such experience,
individual selects certain model. Vicarious experience is
particularly powerful when observers see similarities in
some attribute and then assume that the model’s
performance is diagnostic. Observing the successes of
such models contributes to the observers’ beliefs about
their own capabilities (“if they can do it, so can I”).
Conversely, watching models with perceived similar
attributes that fail can undermine the observers’ beliefs
about their own capability to succeed. When farmers
perceive that the model’s attributes are highly divergent
from their own, the influence of vicarious experience is
greatly minimized. It bears noting that people seek out
models who possess qualities they admire and capabilities
to which they aspire. A significant model is one’s life can
help instill self-beliefs that will influence the course and
direction that life will take. In farming, success varies with
seed quality, land fertility, irrigation and good climatic
conditions. Therefore, in vicarious learning, farmers must
consider success of several determinants and their
relations among others instead of being blind followers.

20. Physiological and affective
states
▪ According to Bandura (1986), somatic and emotional states such as
anxiety, stress, arousal, and mood states also provide information
about efficacy beliefs. People can gauge their degree of confidence
by the emotional state they experience as they contemplate an
action. Strong emotional reactions to a task provide cues about the
anticipated success or failure of the outcome. When they experience
negative thoughts and fears about their capabilities, those affective
reactions can themselves lower self-efficacy perceptions and trigger
additional stress and agitation that help ensure the inadequate
performance they fear. To control such stress, it is important to
teach farmers “deep breathing exercise, time management, control
of negative self-image (I can’t do), positive thinking, sleep,
relaxation and exercise

21. Part-3: Self-Efficacy
measures

22. Belief, Value and Attitude
▪ Belief refers to a set of doctrines, statements or
experiences a person holds as true, usually with evidence
or proof. Both beliefs and values are deeply intertwined
because beliefs influence how an individual develops
values. Value is judgment of worthiness. Attitude is
evaluation.
▪ Fishing is profitable – Belief
▪ Fishing is preferred to Animal husbandry – Value.
▪ I like fishing – Attitude.

23. Judgment of own capabilities
▪ Regularly engage in environment monitoring,
▪ Able to regulate self,
▪ Able to enact mastery over experience,
▪ Able to make vicarious experience,
▪ Able to control physiological and affective
states.

24. Monitoring environmental
uncertainty:
Belief in ones’ capability to monitor changes in the task agent of the agricultural
environment.
Questionnaire
▪ Able to prove wrong information as incorrect (item 1).
▪ Can find out agricultural training center.(item 6).
▪ Able to reach at training centers how far it is (item 11).
▪ Can inspect plant condition every day in spite of other commitments (item 16).
▪ Able to collect new agricultural information (item 21).
▪ Able to be successful in agricultural experiment. (item 26).
▪ Able to monitor regularly the effect on plant after application of fertilizer (item
31).
▪ Can examine raw materials during purchase(item 36).
▪ Can do experiment on new technology in small plot of land. (Item 41)

25. Enactive mastery experience:
Capable to play roles and responsibility of agricultural farmer.
Questionnaire
▪ Able to engage in agricultural activities most of the time (item2).
▪ Able to be successful in new agricultural techniques.(item 7).
▪ Despite of physical and mental weakness, can do agricultural work (item12).
▪ When needed , able to acquire agricultural skills and abilities (item17).
▪ Able to ignore words against agriculture (item 22).
▪ Able to be successful in following high yielding technology (item27).
▪ Able to solve agricultural problems alone (item 32).
▪ If needed, can collect raw materials from other sources (item 37).
▪ Able to create new customer for farm products (item 42).

26. Self regulation
Belief in ones capability to regulate self for goal setting and its achievement.
Questionnaire
▪ Regulating self despite of agricultural anxiety (item3).
▪ Able to maintain production goal in spite of difficulties (Item 8).
▪ Able to pay much attention to specific plans with poor growth (item 13).
▪ Able to determine correct amount of fertilizers and insecticides (item 18).
▪ Able to regulate balance between profit and loss (item23).
▪ Can control excess application of fertilizers and insecticides (item 28).
▪ Able to control not to take much loan though there is a scope (item 33).
▪ Able to determine specific agricultural training (item38).
▪ Able to control unreasonable amount of expenditures in agriculture (item 43).

27. Vicarious experience
Belief in capability to imitate successful farmers and to follow the agriculture
related information of mass-media.
Questionnaire
▪ Able to imitate successful farmers (item 4).
▪ Able to apply experience of successful farmers (item 9).
▪ Able to ask other’s advice during problem (item 14).
▪ Able to participate into any agriculture related discussion (item 19).
▪ Can listen to experienced farmers’ words (item 24).
▪ Can adopt skills of experienced farmers (item 29).
▪ Can apply knowledge through training (item 34).
▪ Can apply mass-media based information in own farming practices (item 39).
▪ Can apply experience of senior farmers after judging (item 44).

28. Controlling physiological and
emotional states
Belief in one’s capability to control self-anxiety and physical illness.
▪ Can overcome agriculture related anxiety (item 5).
▪ Able to keep mentality strong in loss (item 10).
▪ Can keep self in resting phase during worry (item 15).
▪ Not to be depressed for repeated loss (item 20).
▪ Able to apply experience of loss in future (item 25).
▪ Can take the loss at ease (item 30).
▪ Not to make responsible for non production of crop as anticipated (item 35).
▪ Helping other farmer to overcome anxiety (item 40).
▪ Can keep self at ease during agriculture related problems (item 45).

29. References
▪ Dutta Roy, D., Ghosh,S. and Rahman, F.H. (2012).Perceived
Environmental Uncertainty in Crop cultivation in West
Bengal: Agro Psychological Counselling Perspective. Indian
Journal of Psychology. Special issue, January, 111-120.
▪ Dutta Roy,D.(2009)- Self-efficacy of Agricultural farmers:A
case study. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied
Psychology,, 35,2,323-328.
▪ Dutta Roy,D. Chatterjee, Debalina (2009).PREVENTION OF
SUICIDE AMONG FARMERS: SELF-EFFICACY APPROACH.
In. Sandhya Ojha and Shambhu Upadhyay (Eds.).
Psychosocial aspect of health and illness. New Delhi: Global
Publishing House.