Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.
Double-S phenomenon - the USA case (Source: the authors, based on Walton and
Rockoff [2])
It is possible to see, a few periods after diffusion takeoff point, how diffusion slows
down; even, it is evident a decrease in amount of adopters during that deceleration
time (“dis-adoption” decisions). This phenomenon does not make sense in light of
classic innovation diffusion theory [6]; according to it, the more individuals become
adopters, the stronger word-of-mouth force and, therefore, the more adopters market
will have.
Several questions arise from this issue. Why individuals or households stop
adopting the innovation after diffusion takes off? What other “force”, besides the
word-of-mouth, affecting the adoption decision? And what happens during that non-
diffusion period, which makes diffusion takes off again after some time?
While numerous studies try to reproduce the classic S-shaped diffusion
phenomena, little attention has been paid in the double-S diffusion phenomena, and
the reasons behind this emergent behavior remain still confusing for researchers and
practitioners.
Therefore, this paper addresses the emergence of the double-S phenomenon in the
innovation diffusion process and provides an explanation for it based on bounded
rationality guideless. The authors use agent based modeling as a tool for this purpose,
and find the emergent phenomenon after the interaction among individuals, who must
choose between two identical innovations and have imperfect information and limited
calculation capacity.
This research has an explanatory scope. It is not aimed to policy evaluation, since
the double-S phenomenon cannot be considered good or bad by itself; however,
uncover reasons which underlie the emergence of the phenomenon can be useful for
several managerial purposes.
2
Diffusion of Innovations
An important part of the innovation diffusion literature can be classified in two
dominant research families: (1) those that characterize the mechanisms and patterns of
