Overcoming the constraints to the adoption of sustainable land management practices in Australia

There are numerous reasons why landusers do not always adopt innovations. F or different landuse enterprises and for different innovations, different c onstraints will apply and these can be organised into three broad categorie s. The first is characterised by the landuser and the adoption process. The second emphasises the characteristics of the innovation itself and issues associated with the developers of the innovation. The third area deals with the role of extension agents and the transfer process. It is apparent that technology transfer and adoption in sustainable landuse is largely being l ed by commercial organisations. Landusers are being recognised as key stake holders in both the adoption and technology development processes. Furtherm ore, community groups and a range of government and NGOs are becoming invol ved as major stakeholders in the transfer and adoption of sustainable landu se practices. The study, however, reveals a shortage of data on the effecti veness of corporations and other commercial organisations on the technology transfer and adoption processes. Future research is needed on the followin g: understanding the effectiveness of group-based approaches to technology transfer and adoption; determining and predicting rates of adoption of sust ainable practices; the ongoing effectiveness of different forms of media; e valuating existing efforts of technology transfer and adoption particularly related to land management practices; and understanding the constraints to adoption associated with an aging landusing population. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.