Diffusion Studies and Trickle Down

Diffusion studies investigate the process of how an innovation spreads through a social system. The framework called diffusion of innovations theory was studied first by rural sociologists including Bryce Ryan and George Beal to understand the diffusion of high-yielding hybrid seed corn, chemical fertilizers, and weed sprays. Questions were asked about why some farmers embraced these obviously beneficial innovations while others shied away from it.

Whenever individuals adopt or reject an innovation or consume a product, this behavior at some level leads to personal change, and if enough number of individuals adopts an innovation, it certainly leads [Page 454]to changes in the larger culture. Thus, the theory also helps explains cultural shifts shedding light on present-day consumerism and the development of mass culture. Diffusion studies underwent a path-breaking insight when Everett M. Rogers, in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations, reviewed existing studies analyzing the diffusion process of all kinds of innovations that included agricultural innovations, educational innovations, medical innovations, and marketing innovations. He found several similarities in the way diffusion of innovations across fields happened. The theory is one of the most influential social scientific theories that primarily explains the process of social change. Rogers's intention was to understand the adoption of new behaviors with the main premise that innovations diffuse over time according to individuals' stages.

Having reviewed over five hundred empirical studies in the early 1960s, Rogers characterized diffusion as a process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. An innovation is an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or an organization or culture. Earliest research in diffusion studies can be traced to the work of Gabriel Tarde, a French sociologist and legal scholar. Tarde's ideas were further investigated by anthropologists such as Clark Wissler, who studied the diffusion of the horse among the Plains Indians. Wissler's analysis concluded that the introduction of the horse led the Indians to wage continual warfare with neighboring tribes.

Diffusion studies garnered paradigmatic academic status after multiple studies conducted by Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross and others to analyze the diffusion of hybrid seed corn among Iowa farmers. While the innovation led to increased corn yields of 20 percent per acre, the state agricultural officials wondered why such an obviously advantageous agricultural technology required a dozen years to achieve widespread use. Ryan and Gross highlighted the difficulties in adopting this innovation, claiming that the average farmer needed seven years to progress from initial awareness of the innovation to full-scale adoption. Adopting the hybrid corn seed meant crucial decisions that involved purchasing expensive hybrid corn from the seed corn company at a price per bushel—a change that involved discontinuance of their previous cultural practice in which healthy ears of corn were used as seed for the following year.

Thus, it involved changing not only personal behavior but also, at some level, family and communal cultural practices.

The 1950s saw an explosion in diffusion studies particularly by rural sociologists. Further, the diffusion approach was adopted by other social sciences, including marketing, political science, and education. By this time, Rogers argued for a general model of diffusion, and the field became even more popular across disciplines after the landmark study conducted by James S. Coleman, Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel that examined the diffusion of tetracycline among physicians. The drug study helped illuminate the nature of interpersonal diffusion networks, suggesting the role that opinion leaders play in the take off of the diffusion curve.

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