Perceptual Factors Influencing the Adoption of Innovative Tissue Culture Technology by the Australian Avocado Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study attempts to explore the influencing factors from perceptual perspective to the adoption of innovative tissue culture technology Australian avocado industry. Overall, the manuscript is well-written, and the research question is important with interesting findings.

Following are a few comments and suggestion authors may take into account.

1.      Avocado. Add its Latin name.

2.      In the last para. in section 1.2, authors argued “…A major issue in technology adoption research in agriculture is that most studies appear to be conducted after the fact, and not prior to the release of a technology. This type of post-hoc data collection is likely to influence the study results as stakeholders will have already been exposed to extension materials and other users or nonadopters of the technology.”. I would suggest authors rephrase it as current statement is too strong. The post-hoc methods have been widely applied in the impact assessment (including the technology adoption), the quasi-experiment methods, e.g. randomized control trial (RCT), difference-in-difference (DID), Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) method/models, as well as the endogenous switching regression (ESR) can perfectly deal with the shortcoming authors mentioned.

3.       Data limitation. Although authors have mentioned it in the strengthens and limitations section, the small sample size makes the results less convincing. For instance, I understand the avocado industry are mostly located in the Queensland then 24 respondents out of 33 were selected seems Ok, but only one participant interviewed in South Australia seems less representative.

4.      Influencing factors. A few factors seem had been neglected, e.g. education and cultural factors, since empirical evidence have supported that education level have always play important role in adopting new technologies (in conventional adoption regression analysis, education attainment is normally included as control variable). In your case, education may also affect the perception.     

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1.     The authors should have pointed out the main scientific contributions of their paper in the abstract.

2.     The introduction is not written well. It is more literature review than an introduction. The authors did not place the study in a broad context nor highlighted why it is important to investigate this subject. They should have defined the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The authors did not point out the main aim of the work nor highlight the main conclusions and scientific contributions of the paper. At the end of the introduction the authors should have provided a brief overview of the following sections. The paper actual lacks a proper introduction since most of the material from the current introduction should be moved to a separate section under the heading “Literature review”.

3.     Literature review is poor. The topic of tissue culture is not elaborated well enough. The authors should have investigated various aspects of this technology (development, applications, limitations, etc.). The same should have been done for the agricultural technology adoption (and technology adoption in general), as well as for the TAM2. The authors should have also pointed out clearly the research gaps in all of these research aspects (based on the literature review) that this paper tried to cover.

4.     The methodology is very poorly described. In addition I see nothing novel or innovative in this methodology. To be honest, the entire research seems too trivial, from the sample size, over the methodology being used, to the obtained results.

5.     It is unclear whether the authors actually used the TAM2 or not? I do not see most of the basic model steps application nor the results which should have been obtained in that way (e.g. identification of immediate challenges or barriers, identification of immediate benefits, identification of influencers which would promote positive behavior intentions for users, etc.).

6.     The survey sample is too small for any meaningful statistical analysis or any significant conclusion.

7.     The discussion is weak. The discussion should actually discuss and interpret their research in perspective of the previous studies, not just in terms of the results but the methodology as well.

8.     The conclusion is also weak. It lacks one of the main elements, future research directions which would be interesting to the majority of the journal readership. Not a single one future research direction is provided.

9.     There are certain spelling errors (e.g. line 199 “they” instead of “their”).

10.  There are certain technical errors:

-      There should be at least a couple of sentences between headings of different levels (e.g. between section 1 and sub-section 1.1, or between section 2 and sub-section 2.1, etc.).

-      The references in the reference list are not fully formatted according to the provided template (instructions for authors).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

[Comment 1] Novelty

(Section 1) The authors must show the novelty of this study by presenting comparison with previous studies in a table.

[Comment 2] Literature review and research background

[Subcomment 2a] (Section 1.2) The authors must list reasons for difficult technology adoption on agricultural products first. Then, in the methodology and analysis, the authors need to show that they have considered such factors appropriately, to ensure a good observation for the avocado case.

[Subcomment 2b] (Section 1.2) I believe that the authors should have provide statistics on the level of tissue culture technology development for the avocado. I suggest the authors list important technology development attempts with the references and relate them to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) information as well.

[Subcomment 2c] (Section 1) Please add literature review about the adoption of tissue culture to any other product to show the state-of-the-art of its acceptance level. It would complete this paper background and place an appropriate introduction for the necessity and novelty part of this paper as well.

[Comment 3] Methodology and analysis

[Subcomment 3a] (Section 3) I suggest the authors provide more quantitative analysis using the questionnaire results, instead of just stating the general percentage result and directly providing their qualitative opinion based on the results. Some correlation or input-output analysis would be appropriate.

[Subcomment 3b] (Section 3.3) What are the reasons for accepting or not accepting tissue cultures (especially from the point of view of the technology quality/appropriateness), based on the questionnaire or interviews?

[Subcomment 3c] The result representation in Table 2 is confusing. Please use a more general statistic, e.g., average rank, etc.

[Subcomment 3d] (Table 2) The authors need to list all other features as well to provide important insights for the readers.

[Comment 4] Writing quality and clarity

(lines 96-98) Please list the references for the technology adoption question generation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the manuscript has been significantly improved as a result of the review process. Although there were some parts of the paper that could be additionally improved, I find that the current version of the paper is of satisfactory quality.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your revisions.