Journal of Health Communication, Volume 9: 1319, 2004 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Inc.

ISSN: 1081-0730 print/1087-0415 online DOI: 10.1080/10810730490271449

A Prospective and Retrospective Look at the Diffusion Model

EVERETT M. ROGERS
Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
In this article we discuss how the diffusion model originally was created, some of the most important ways in which it has evolved over the past 30 years, and its future prospects.

The purpose of this article is to retrace the historical background of the diffusion of innovations model, and its evolution, and to speculate about the future of this theory. I was an active participant in this history, which began with early applications of the diffusion model to U.S. agriculture in the 1950s. I later helped transfer the diffusion model to the eld of public health and to other elds. Through the past ve decades, I have been an enthusiast for the generalizability of the diffusion model. My view of the history detailed here is necessarily focused on what I have personally experienced and observed, and thus it may be limited in certain ways.

Diffusion
Diffusion is the process through which an innovation, dened as an idea perceived as new, spreads via certain communication channels over time among the members of a social system. A great deal of research in a variety of academic disciplines (about 5000 studies today) has been conducted on the diffusion of innovations over the past six decades. The innovations of study range from hybrid seed corn to modern math to the snowmobile to antibiotic drugs to HIV/AIDS prevention (Rogers, 1995). From these investigations has come a general model of the diffusion of innovations, which can be applied to the recent spread of the Internet or to any other new idea. Through a coincidence, the diffusion model got underway in Iowa, and, specically, at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, about a decade before I arrived on the campus as a freshman majoring in agriculture. I grew up on a family farm near Carroll, Iowa, a community neighboring Scranton and Jefferson, the two communities of study in the inuential Ryan and Gross (1943) hybrid seed corn study. This investigation, more than any other, provided the basic framework for the diffusion model. It helped establish the paradigm for diffusion research (Rogers, 1995).
This paper was originally presented at the Conference on Forty Years of Diffusion of Innovations, Washington, D.C. The George Washington University, School of Public Health, April 2, 2002. Correspondence should be addressed to Everett M. Rogers, Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131-1171. E-mail: erogers@unm.edu

13

14

E. M. Rogers

The Iowa Hybrid Seed Corn Study

Bryce Ryan was a new PhD in sociology from Harvard University who joined the Iowa State faculty in the then Department of Economics and Sociology in 1939. While at Harvard, Ryan had read anthropological studies of diffusion, which mainly utilized qualitative data. On arrival in Ames, he was attracted to study non-economic factors in farmers economic decisions (such investigation made sense as Ryan was appointed in a department of economics and sociology at a university which emphasized agriculture). Ryan chose to study the diffusion and adoption of hybrid seed corn by Iowa farmers. He suspected that sociological factors like the inuence of a farmers neighbors on his decision to adopt hybrid seed were particularly important. Hybrid seed corn resulted from genetic and plant breeding research conducted at Iowa State University (and at other agricultural universities), which was sponsored by the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station (the research arm of Iowa State Universitys College of Agriculture). Hybrid seed corn was one of the rst and most important of the wave of agricultural technologies that were to bring about an agricultural revolution, leading to more productive (and fewer) farmers. Iowa was a key corn-growing state, and hybrid seed corn increased yields by almost 20 percent. Another advantage of this agricultural innovation was that the corn stalks were sturdier, and hence better suited to harvesting with mechanical corn-pickers, which were becoming more widely used at the time. Finally, hybrid seed corn was hardier and better able to withstand the serious droughts that affected Iowa in 1934 and 1936. One might expect that the rate of diffusion of hybrid seed corn would be very rapid, but, puzzling to scholars like Bryce Ryan, it was not. For example, the Ryan and Gross (1943) study was to nd that 13 years were required for the diffusion process in their two communities of study. Further, the typical Iowa farmer took seven years to move from rst planting hybrid seed, to planting 100 percent of his corn acreage in hybrid. Obviously certain non-economic factors must be at work to explain such seemingly nonrational behavior. What were they? Possible explanations centered on how farmers obtained information about the innovation, and which sources/channels were inuential in helping them decide to use the new idea, which they initially perceived as uncertain and at least somewhat risky. Prior to the advent of hybrid seed, Iowa farmers selected the best-looking ears of open-pollinated corn in their elds each fall, and then prepared their own seed for planting the next spring. A farmer who adopted hybrid seed had to purchase new seed each year (from a hybrid seed corn company). So adopting the innovation meant discontinuing the use of a familiar practice. Professor Ryan obtained funding for the hybrid seed corn study from the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, the unit that had earlier funded research to develop hybrid seed corn (Valente & Rogers, 1995). Neal C. Gross, a newly arrived graduate student in rural sociology at Iowa State University, came from an urban background in Milwaukee. Ryan promised Gross that in exchange for personally interviewing the several hundred farmers in the two Iowa communities, he could use the data in his masters thesis. Using a survey questionnaire, Gross asked each of the Iowa farmers in the two communities when he had decided to adopt the innovation (the year of adoption was to become the main dependent variable of study), communication sources/channels, and how much of the respondents corn acreage had been planted in hybrid seed each year after the rst trial. In addition to these recall questions about the innovation, the Iowa farmers were asked about their formal education, age, farm size, income, travel to Des Moines, readership of farm magazines, and other variables that were later correlated with innovativeness (measured as the year in which each farmer had adopted hybrid seed).

Prospective, Retrospective Look

15

ve Gross that Iowa farmers began their workday very early. On Someone told the na the rst morning of the diffusion survey, Gross was waiting at a respondents farm at 6:00 a.m., when it was still half-dark. He averaged an unbelievable 14 completed interviews per day during the summer of 1941. Of the 345 farmers that Gross interviewed (some were discarded because they farmed less than 20 acres or because they started farming after the innovation began to diffuse), 259 respondents were included in the data-analysis. The resulting data were analyzed and reported in three publications: Grosss masters thesis, an Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station bulletin, and a 1943 journal article in Rural Sociology. This later publication is the most widely cited, and became the founding document for the research specialty of the Diffusion of Innovations. Several previous studies had been completed on the diffusion of agricultural innovations, but they did not create a research tradition because they did not propose a research paradigm for studying the Diffusion of Innovations (Valente & Rogers, 1995). The Ryan and Gross (1943) study established the customary research methodology to be used by most later diffusion investigators: Retrospective survey interviews in which adopters of an innovation are asked when they adopted, where or from whom they obtained information about the innovation, and the consequences of adoption. Ryan and Gross (1943) popularized the term diffusion (which had previously been used by several anthropologists), although they did not use the concept of innovation. That terminology was to come from later scholars. Ryan and Gross (1943) found that the rate of adoption of hybrid seed corn formed an S-shaped curve over time. The new seed was released in 1928 and by 1933 only 10 percent of the Iowa farmers had adopted. Then, the rate of adoption took off, shooting up to 40 percent adoption by 1936. Eventually, the rate of adoption leveled off as fewer farmers remained to adopt, until only two respondents remained as non-adopters in the 1941 survey. Earlier adopters were characterized by larger-sized farms, higher incomes, and more education, and they made more trips to Des Moines, Iowas largest city, about 75 miles away. A key nding from the seed corn study was the importance of neighboring farmers in convincing an individual to adopt the innovation. At the heart of the diffusion process was information-exchange about the innovation, as farmers shared their personal and subjective experiences with the new idea, gradually giving meaning to the innovation. Shortly after the hybrid seed corn studys data-gathering was completed, both Ryan and Gross left Iowa State University. Gross earned his masters degree in 1942, and his PhD degree in 1946. Thus, the hybrid seed corn study did not evolve immediately into a continuing research program on diffusion at Iowa State. A 10-year hiatus occurred in diffusion research, in part due to the interruption of World War II. Diffusion investigation was carried forward, starting a few years later, by several other rural sociologists, notably Eugene A. Wilkening, PhD, at the University of Wisconsin, and Herbert Lionberger, PhD, at the University of Missouri. The invisible college composed of these scholars and by Lee Coleman, PhD, at the University of Kentucky was joined in 1954 by George M. Beal, PhD, and Joe Bohlen, PhD, at Iowa State University. Together these scholars launched a post-World War II renaissance in agricultural diffusion research. Intellectual coordination among these diffusion scholars was achieved through their twice-yearly meetings in Chicago, sponsored by the Farm Foundation, and by papers presented and discussed at annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society and at the Rural Sociological Society (Valente & Rogers, 1995). An invisible college was starting to form.

Present Authors Role in Diffusion Research

I graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelors degree in agriculture in 1952, and then served as an Air Force ofcer during the Korean War, where I learned

16

E. M. Rogers

something of applied social science research. After my discharge from military service, I returned to Iowa State for graduate work in rural sociology, to study the diffusion of agricultural innovations. I had become interested in this topic by observing the farmers in my home community near Carroll, who delayed in adopting news ideas that would be protable for them. Iowa State University was then one of the centers for studying diffusion, and in 1954 George Beal was initiating a study of the diffusion of a dozen agricultural innovations in one community, Collins, Iowa, located about 20 miles from Ames. This project was supported by the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. I joined this project in Spring 1954, and within about a week of my discharge from the Air Force, I was participating in a graduate seminar on diffusion, taught by Beal. I read the Ryan and Gross (1943) paper about the diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa communities. Shortly later, I was interviewing some of the 155 farmers residing in Collins. My doctoral dissertation in 1957 was an analysis of the diffusion of agricultural innovations in this Iowa rural community. While reviewing literature for my dissertation, I encountered studies of the diffusion of kindergartens and driver training among schools, and the spread of an antibiotic drug (tetracycline) among medical doctors. The main ndings were similar to the agricultural diffusion studies: An S-shaped rate of adoption over time, different sources/channels at different stages in the innovation-decision process for an individual, and a tendency for innovators (the rst individuals in a system to adopt an innovation) to travel and read widely and to have a cosmopolite orientation. The review of literature chapter in my dissertation argued that diffusion was a general process, not bound by the type of innovation studied, by who the adopters were, or by place or culture. I was convinced that the diffusion of innovations was a kind of universal micro-process of social change. Certainly one event that led toward this type of thinking was a presentation on the diffusion of agricultural innovations that George Beal and Joe Bohlen made to the staff of the Iowa Extension Service in December 1954 in Ames. It had grown out of the graduate seminar on diffusion in which I had enrolled the previous spring at Iowa State, and focused (1) on the sources/channels of communication used at stages in the individual-level innovation-decision process, and (2) on characteristics of farmers who adopted relatively earlier and later in the diffusion process. These were important steps toward generalizing a model of diffusion, although the Beal/ Bohlen conceptualization was still oriented to farm innovations. Soon, however, Beal and Bohlen were being asked to give their presentation to audiences interested in civil defense (where the innovation of interest was building household bomb shelters). Clearly a more general diffusion model was being discussed. My argument for a generalized diffusion model led me to write a book, Diffusion of Innovations, published in 1962 (Rogers, 1962), that set forth common ndings to date, arguing for a general diffusion model, and for more standardized ways of adopter categorization and so forth. My book emphasized the term innovation rather than the plethora of terms that had been used for this concept. After completing graduate work at Iowa State in 1957, I had joined the rural sociology faculty at Ohio State University, where I conducted research on the diffusion of agricultural innovations among Ohio farmers. In 19631964, I taught and conducted research on the diffusion process in peasant communities in Colombia as a Fulbright lecturer.

Prospective, Retrospective Look

17

On my return to the United States, I accepted a faculty appointment in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University, then the seed institution for communication study in the United States (Rogers, 2001). This academic change t with my vision for diffusion research; it would be more generalized, across various disciplines. So my interest in a general diffusion model helped take me out of rural sociology (and the study of agricultural innovations) into the eld of communication (Rogers, 2003). I began to study the diffusion of health and family planning innovations in India, and the diffusion of educational innovations among government secondary schools in Thailand. Eventually, in the late 1960s, the study of agricultural innovations by rural sociologists , in the face of farm surpluses (Valente & Rogers, 1995). But by then, the became passe diffusion model had spread to many other academic elds.

The Diffusion Model Diffuses

The ve editions of my diffusion book (published in 1962, 1975, 1983, 1995, and 2003), each about a decade apart, mark turning points in the growth of the diffusion eld. The total number of diffusion publications available at the time of each edition are as follows:
* * * * *

1962, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2003,

Diffusion of Innovations, 405 diffusion publications. Communication of Innovations (Second Edition), 1500 diffusion publications. Diffusion of Innovations (Third Edition), 3085 diffusion publications. Diffusion of Innovations (Fourth Edition), 4000 diffusion publications. Diffusion of Innovations (Fifth Edition), 5000 diffusion publications.

Here one can see that the cumulative number of diffusion publications itself forms a kind of S-shaped diffusion curve, one that is still increasing. Today, and for a number of years, about 250 diffusion publications appear each year, approximately one each workday. These publications appear in a very wide range of scholarly journals. Since about 1990, diffusion research has focused especially on diffusion of the Internet (more on this later). Helped along by publication of the several editions of my Diffusion book (Rogers, 1962, 1971, 1983 1995, 2003), each of which argued for a general diffusion model, the diffusion approach caught on in a variety of academic disciplines. In fact, today there are few behavioral science disciplines (perhaps there are none) that do not study diffusion. In geography, scholars investigate the diffusion of innovations through space. Political scientists study the diffusion of policies, like no-smoking ordinances among municipal governments. Anthropologists explore the diffusion and consequences of technological innovations like the snowmobile among the Skolt Lapps in Finland. Marketing scholars investigate the diffusion of new consumer products in the marketplace, and business management scholars study the spread of an innovation in a corporation. Public health researchers study the spread of family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and other preventive health innovations. Over the years, the public health tradition of diffusion research has represented about 7 percent of all diffusion publications, but this percent rose to 10 percent by 2003 (Rogers, 2003). During the years since 1957, I helped train some dozens of PhD scholars in diffusion study. They broadened the eld of diffusion research and spread it to other academic disciplines, in addition to advancing the diffusion model in important ways. Some studied the diffusion of news events (like the news of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks), educational innovations, public health innovations, etc. Some of these new PhDs took

18

E. M. Rogers

faculty positions in departments of communication, others in schools of public health, departments of sociology, etc. Yet other PhD students in marketing, nursing, pharmacy, management, for example, enrolled in my course on the Diffusion of Innovations (and in the diffusion courses taught at Ohio University, Michigan State University, Iowa State University, Colorado State University, and at many other universities), and spread such study in their own disciplines. Each day in recent years I receive one or two e-mail messages about diffusion research from students or young scholars in a variety of academic disciplines and from various countries. It seems that today, scholarly research on the Diffusion of Innovations knows almost no boundaries. This fact is a kind of afrmation that the generalizability of the diffusion model has been born out by history since 1962.

Application of the Diffusion Model to AIDS Prevention

The generalizability of the diffusion model means that this theoretical framework can be applied to a variety of real world problems, often with useful results. One noteworthy example is the STOP AIDS program in San Francisco in the 1980s. When the AIDS epidemic began in 1981, it was concentrated in several metropolitan centers in the United States, one of which was San Francisco. At the time, about 40 percent of the male population of San Francisco was gay, attracted by the tolerant attitudes of the city. A certain degree of sexual freedom was then prevalent in San Francisco. When HIV began to spread through the gay population, gay mens organizations began to mount efforts to prevent the spread of the epidemic, but it was already too late for some 48 percent of the gay and bisexual population, who were already infected (Wolfeiler, 1998). The STOP AIDS program was organized by and for gay men in San Francisco. Based on the Diffusion of Innovations model and on Kurt Lewins small group strategy, STOP AIDS employed outreach workers who were gay, and many of whom were HIVpositive, to recruit individuals to small group meetings of from 10 to 12 men each. The meetings were held in homes and apartments along Castro Street and in other areas where gay men lived. Each meeting, led by a gay man who often was HIV-positive, featured explanation of the means of HIV transmission and the importance of safer sex in preventing infection. Each small group meeting ended with the individuals raising their hands if they intended to practice safer sex, and if they would organize and lead a small group meeting (Singhal & Rogers, 2003). Here we see how the diffusion model was utilized as a strategy for HIV prevention. STOP AIDS assumed that if they could reach a critical mass of opinion leaders (individuals who are respected for their opinions about innovations) in the gay community, the idea of HIV prevention would then spread spontaneously to the rest of the target population. Further, STOP AIDS used the small group approach to recruit leaders to organize further small group meetings, in a kind of self-sustaining diffusion process. The STOP AIDS intervention was a success. Some 7000 individuals were trained in the small group meetings, and they are estimated to have reached another 30,000 individuals out of the total gay population in San Francisco of 142,000 individuals. Thereafter, attendance at the small group meetings declined, and STOP AIDS closed down, thinking that its job was done. The number of new HIV infections per year dropped from 8000 in 1983 to 650 in 1985. The rate of unprotected anal intercourse (one of the main means of HIV transmission in San Francisco) dropped from 71 percent in 1983 to 27 percent in 1987. Accordingly, the number of AIDS-related deaths per year dropped from 1600 to 250 in recent years (much of the very recent decrease since the mid-1990s is due to anti-retroviral drugs).

Prospective, Retrospective Look

19

Here we see how the applications of Diffusion Theory, combined with Lewinian small-group social psychology, helped stem the spread of an epidemic (unfortunately, this intervention began too late for almost half of the gay population of San Francisco). The San Francisco model, as it came to be called, was limited in its applicability to other cities and nations where local conditions differed (for example, gay men might not be out of the closet, or perhaps they did not live in dense urban networks). Nevertheless, the STOP AIDS experience in San Francisco shows that the diffusion model could be used to save lives (Wolfeiler, 1998).

Conclusions
The diffusion model has now been around for a long time, almost 60 years. Is diffusion dead or dying? It is not declining. The number of diffusion publications completed per year continues to hold steady. Unlike most models of human behavior that begin to fade after some years of use, the diffusion model continues to attract strong interest from scholars. The basic diffusion model has evolved since publication of my rst diffusion book in 1962, as important additions such as the following have been made:
*

The critical mass, dened as the point at which enough individuals have adopted an innovation that further diffusion becomes self-sustaining. A focus on networks as a means of gaining further understanding of how a new idea spreads through interpersonal channels. Re-invention, the process through which an innovation is changed by its adopters during the diffusion process.

New applications of the diffusion model are constantly occurring, with yet newer innovations becoming available to study. My main conclusion is that the diffusion process displays consistent patterns and regularities, across a range of conditions, innovations, and cultures. Thus it seems there is indeed a general diffusion model.

References
Rogers, E. M. (1962). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press. Rogers, E. M. (1971). Diffusion of innovations, 2nd edition. New York: Free Press. Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations, 3rd edition. New York: Free Press. Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations, 4th edition. New York: Free Press. Rogers, E. M. (2001). The Department of Communication at Michigan State University as a seed institution for communication study. Communication Study, 52(3), 234248. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. 5th edition. New York: Free Press. Ryan, B. & Gross, N. (1943). The diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa communities. Rural Sociology, 8, 1524. Singhal, A. & Rogers, E. M. (2003). Combating AIDS: Communication strategies in action. New Delhi: Sage/India. Valente, T. M. & Rogers, E. M. (1995). The origins and development of the diffusion of innovations paradigm as an example of scientic growth. Science Communication, 16(3), 242273. Wolfeiler, D. (1998). Community organizing and community building among gay and bisexual men: The STOP AIDS Project. In M. Minkler (Ed.), Community organizing and community building for health (pp. 230243) New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.