Introducing the adopter perspective in social innovation research

Abstract

It is generally well-accepted in innovation research that consumer/user adoption of an invention is key to its diffusion. Despite general awareness about the importance of the adopter perspective in innovation diffusion, the majority of the literature on social innovation, hardly addresses the adoption-side of innovation diffusion. Social innovation potential therefore often remains under-utilized. In this paper the result of a review of 468 (predominantly English language) publications on social innovation is provided (based on Web of Science), searching for the adopter perspective in social innovation research. The findings show that, although some hints at the role of adopters, and their environment, can be found in the literature, attention for the willingness and capacities of potential adopters is meager in peer-reviewed publications. Propelled by high policy expectations, at the national as well as European level, scientific interest in social innovation has been booming over the last decade. Without a proper understanding of social innovation diffusion dynamics and adopter willingness and their interactions with existing institutions, expectations may not be fulfilled and specific social innovation policies that have been emerging across Europe may not be able to achieve intended policy goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Social innovation
• diffusion
• adoption
• motivation
• literature review

Acknowledgements

I thank Aline Reichow for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper as well as the anonymous reviewer for useful comments and helpful advice. I furthermore thank Florian Hebel for his support in editing the lists of publications.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that Upham, Bögel, and Dütschke (2020) refer to the 4th edition, published in 1995; I had excess only to the 2003 5th edition.

2 Regarding the difficulties of identifying these different types in practice, see also Hölsgens and Schultze (2020).

3 Various authors do not speak of diffusion, but use related concepts, e.g. scaling, growing, spreading, institutionalization. These cannot be treated as synonyms, but are considered under the umbrella of ‘diffusion’ here.

4 For insights into the importance of values in (environmental) behavior, I happily refer the reader to Steg and colleagues, see for instance Steg et al. (2014). Communication between this field of research and studies on social innovation and sustainability transitions – unfortunately – remains meagre.

5 As has been acknowledge above, and was rightfully commented by the reviewer, the English language bias in the reviewed papers may lead to somewhat biased results. Given that the review covers studies of cases from all over the world, it may be expected that similar results would be found if more languages could have been included. That being said, the fact that authors addressing case studies from developing countries more frequently showed a sensitivity to institutional factors hints at the possibility that these, and other authors, may have actually addressed some of these issues more in their native language.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rick Hölsgens

Rick Hölsgens works as a social scientist at TU Dortmund University’s Social Research Center (Faculty of Social Sciences). His research focuses on the role of social change and social innovations for sustainability transitions and (urban) climate change adaptation. He holds a PhD in economic history. Currently, he leads the project ProPolis – Basics for the operationalization of PALM-4U and coordinates the research consortium of the project iResilience; Social innovations and intelligent urban infrastructures for resilient cities.