Understanding the adoption of smartphone apps in crop protection
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Understanding the adoption of smartphone apps in crop protection Marius Michels1 · Vanessa Bonke1 · Oliver Musshoff1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract There is a steady increase in smartphone apps available to improve farmers’ decision mak‑ ing with respect to crop protection. While current studies have focused on smartphone adoption in general and farmers’ general willingness to pay for crop protection smartphone apps in particular, none have focused on the initial adoption decision. Furthermore, it has not been studied yet which app functions are perceived as useful and which are actually used by farmers. Based on an online survey conducted in 2019 with 207 German farmers, this study investigated latent factors affecting farmers’ adoption decision for crop protec‑ tion smartphone apps based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technol‑ ogy (UTAUT) framework applying partial least squares equation modelling and a binary logit model. Descriptive results show that 95% of the surveyed farmers use a smartphone, but only 71% use a crop protection smartphone app. Apps providing information about weather, pest scouting and infestations forecasts are perceived as most useful by the major‑ ity of farmers. However, reported use fell short of reported usefulness. With respect to the model for the UTAUT, 73% of the variation in the behavioral intention to use a crop protection smartphone app is explained by the model. The results are of interest for policy makers in the field of digitization in agriculture as well as providers and developers of crop protection smartphone apps since the results could be used for further development of apps and policies regarding digitization. Keywords Crop protection · Digitization · Smartphone · Smartphone apps · Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology
Introduction Crop protection is becoming increasingly challenging for farmers due to increased man‑ agement requirements related to the implementation of integrated pest management strate‑ gies. Selecting the best pest management strategies depends on a number of factors, inter alia, the early diagnosis and forecast of pest development. To facilitate a more sustainable * Marius Michels [email protected]‑goettingen.de 1
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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Precision Agriculture
agricultural intensification, recent research results and agronomic knowledge in the form of practical recommendations need to be transferred to farmers (Struik and Kuyper 2017). One way to transfer this knowledge is the use of decision support tools (DST) based on information and communication technology (ICT). Focusing on crop protection, these DST can play a major role in identifying diseases (Hallau et al. 2018), simulating disease devel‑ opment (Damos 2015) and optimizing pesticide applications (Nansen et al. 2015). They have been shown, for instance,
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