Community image and community innovativeness
1990
Borich, T.O. | Korsching, P.F.
The rural crisis of the 1980s exacerbated the chronic problem of maintaining basic public and private services in rural communities. Although the adoption of innovative service-delivery systems to address these concerns has occurred in rural communities, the extent of such adoption has been limited. Not enough knowledge is currently available on the adoption of innovations by communities to help community development practitioners develop effective diffusion strategies. This paper, as a step to understanding this process, examines the impacts of the adoption of innovations in twenty-two rural Iowa communities. It is hypothesized that rural communities with fatalistic or content self-images are less likely to be innovative than are more-confident and less-content communities. Results support the hypothesis that fatalistic communities are less innovative. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, rural communities with greater contentment are also more innovative. The findings indicate that community development practitioners need to consider a community's image before introducing new ideas and practices to a community for consideration and adoption.
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