Modeling of Communication Behaviour and Transfer of Technology through Institutional Innovations

Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council, an autonomous body under Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, undertook the task of disseminating systems approach towards increasing productivity of cereal crops in low productivity areas, increasing farm income of hilly regions and so forth. During this endeavour, renewed extension modules have been evolved. Several sustainable extension modules have been demonstrated, which resulted in gainful utilisation of extension services in different facets of technology adoption at field level.

Communication model is an idealised description of necessary act of communication to occur. Its useful theoretical constructs are used for explanatory purposes. It gives an idea of the whole system by explaining the relationship of one part of another. This relationship was studied by developing an appropriate communication behaviour model. It was found that the value of R² was less in case of liner function than that of power function. The Cobb Douglas model was found to be best fit for explaining communication behaviour of farmers. It also revealed that with the increase in some of the socio-personal, economical and psychological variables, the communication behaviour of the farmers increased significantly but with a decreasing ratio. Ultimately, communication behaviour reached a saturation point explained by the present model.