A systematic literature review of the factors affecting the precision agriculture adoption process

For agricultural industries to capture many environmental and economic benefits that have been demonstrated for precision agriculture (PA) technologies, an understanding of the factors affecting adoption of these technologies is required to adequately inform the development of PA approaches and the programs used to promote their use. A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to explore the processes of adoption of PA technologies, using an innovation diffusion framework to analyse the complex interactions between different factors in the adoption process. A total of 34 relevant publications were extracted from Scopus database following a systematic search and analysis process. PA technologies adoption research has predominantly been undertaken in the United States and Germany, with industrial crops receiving the most research attention. Relative advantage and motivation were the most frequently mentioned factors affecting PA technologies adoption. However, very few studies have examined multiple components of the complex adoption process, and most were narrowly focussed on assessing the impact of a single aspect. The conclusions drawn from the review are that many of the determinants of innovation diffusion that have been examined in other industry contexts were absent in the PA technologies adoption literature, and that the complexity and multidimensional nature of the adoption process was very poorly represented.