Effectiveness of different digital formats on symbolic adoption of sugarcane cultivation practices among the farmers

Abstract

The present study was conducted in Athani taluk of Belagavi District in Karnataka state. ‘Before-After’ without
control group experimental design was used to determine the effectiveness of different digital formats in terms of symbolic
adoption of sugarcane cultivation practices among farmers. Formats was developed on “Sugarcane cultivation practices”
was the subject matter selected for the study. Different digital formats, namely Mobile App, Video and WhatsApp message,
all three having almost the same content were developed and tested for their effectiveness. These formats acted as treatments
for the study and all the treatments were administered to the growers within 15 days. Three villages were selected randomly.
From each village, 50 sugarcane growers were selected for each treatment on the basis of random sampling. Thus, the total
sample size is 150. The effectiveness was studied in terms of symbolic adoption for different digital formats. The results
revealed that Video was effective (39.60) with respect to symbolic adoption followed by Mobile App (35.30) and WhatsApp
message (34.50) and all the formats were effective in terms of symbolic adoption with considerable variation in their
effectiveness. There is significant difference between the symbolic adoption due to different digital formats. Hence, Video
could be used as an effective format for the dissemination of farm technologies to farmers