Integrated Technology Acceptance Model for the Evaluation of Agricultural Decision Support Systems

The evaluation process of agricultural Decision Support Systems (agDSSs) is mostly based on verification and validation criteria which reflect the viewpoint of one or a few persons, who are mostly involved in the development process. However, usability evaluation is regarded as very important criteria, which measures acceptance of IT-based innovations, involving as many people and reference groups as possible to produce more realistic results related to their adoption. To date, researchers have used many technology acceptance models (TAM) to measure likely adoption chances of innovation or technology. However, the frequency and scope of such studies in agDSSs are predominantly very low, which is attributed to the technical limitations of contemporary TAMs to consider social, organizational and environmental externalities of farmers’ perceptions, behaviors and attitudes beyond “technical aspects” in an explicit manner. Therefore, we are presenting a usability based evaluation framework for the agDSSs considering attitudes, mind-sets, social, organizational, environmental and cultural contexts beyond ‘technical perspective’ to help and support DSS practitioners with the key contributing factors. The proposed framework has been used to investigate the user’s acceptance of agDSS developed for Insect-Pest and Nutrient Management of apple (AIP&NM) in India.