Adoption Behaviour of Barn Automation Technology in Flue Cured Tobacco Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Adoption and technology diffusion are the processes governing the utilization of innovations. There is often significant interval among the time of the innovation, availability in the market, and the time it is widely used by customers. Barn automation in flue cured tobacco industry in Sri Lanka is a newly introduced innovative technology to the tobacco farmers. However, this technology has been diffused among a few farmers. Therefore, Theory of Planed Behavior Model was used to evaluate the adoption behavior of tobacco farmers to the new technology and a logistic regression model was estimated to identify the determinants of non adopter’s intention to use the technology. Two surveys were conducted for 54 adopters and 150 non adopters respectively to gather data. Results proved that adopters almost agreed with the facilitating condition, external influence, self efficacy and perceived user friendliness. Interpersonal influence toward the adoption, self control of decision and perceived usefulness of the product are the dimensions which were moderately agreed with by the barn owners. Results of the logistic regression indicated that non adopters intention to use the automation technology have been significantly affected by barn owners awareness about automation technology, attendance to the training program, negative attitude towards the industrial uncertainty, perception towards the production cost, experience of the barn owners and barn owners.