A conceptual bridge for the ‘innovation-adoption gap’ in the property profession

Amid digital transformation, property valuation innovations (PVIs) can enhance professional service firms’ (PSFs) operations. Meanwhile, literature suggests that some PSFs and property professionals are sceptical about the relevance of some PVIs because of compatibility, performance, complexity, and relative advantage issues. Such concerns affect PSFs and property professionals’ decisions to adopt PVIs. While property literature is replete with evidence about the development phase of the innovation life cycle, little is known about how to aid PSFs and property professionals’ innovation-decision processes. To help address these concerns, we adopted a non-systematic literature review approach to critically review Rogers (2003) Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. The DOI theory is widely reported to successfully predict the adoption of emerging innovations within a social network. Based on Rogers’ innovation-decision process, we proposed a dynamic process model to help bridge the innovation-adoption gap in the property profession. The conceptual model advocates collaboration between PVI developers and potential users to address adoption and engagement challenges through the innovation life cycle. The framework provides insights that can aid researchers, educators, and professional bodies in evaluating suitable ways to promote digital innovations as decision support systems to facilitate data management amid the digital revolution.