Development of adoption index: A proxy measure for assessing the adoption rate of agroforestry practices in Indian context

Abstract

Adoption index for understanding the acceptance of different agroforesty systems has been discussed in the present paper, keeping in view the pros and cons of the previous indices presented by different workers. Our model considers the different factors like agroforestry systems, components of the systems, temporal aspects and the purpose of the agroforestry system for the estimation of adoption rate of different agroforestry models. This adoption Index will give an absolute measurement of adoption rate and the definite position to a farmer on the continuum path of adoption, which can reflect the adoption level of individual farmers and could be appropriate rather than binominal models (adopters versus non-adopters) as this would minimize the definitional problem regarding the exact delineation between ‘non-adopters’, ‘testers’ and ‘adopters’ and ‘pseudo adopters.