Farmers' perspective on digitalization of climate-smart agricultural practices: a comparative study in Tamil Nadu, India

Adopting digitalization of climate-smart agricultural (DCSA) practices is expected to promote improved adaptation, mitigation, and productivity in agricultural activities of small landholding farmers. Understanding the perceptions and influential factors that influence farmers' adoption of DCSA services is crucial to promoting DCSA services and making farmers adept at tackling climate change's impact in the future from the policymakers’ perspective. Through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, we studied the perception of DCSA amongst two sets of farmers (Type A: government-led extension functionaries; Type B: supported by a local change agent). To reveal the similarities and differences, we categorize the two sets of farmers’ responses under attributes of diffusion of innovation theory (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and communicability). We found that the better adoption of DCSA practices is attributed to the intermediary role played by institutions and local change agents in providing relevant support and enabling farmers to adopt DCSA practices seamlessly. Our findings contribute to speeding up the dissemination of agricultural information and increasing farmers’ adoption of DCSA services. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine influential factors for DCSA adoption from the standpoint of Diffusion of Innovation's theory attributes of technology in the Tamil Nadu case study area.