What is diffusion of innovation, and how does it spread through contagion and hierarchical diffusion depending on factors in time and space?

Diffusion of innovation is the process by which a particular culture or technology spreads to different regions and social groups over time. It occurs in three stages – generator, diffuser, and saturator – and is driven by factors in time and space, with contagion and hierarchical diffusion reducing the gap between regions. The adopters of an innovation are divided into four groups based on the speed at which they adopt the innovation, and they play an important role in the diffusion of the innovation.

 

Diffusion of innovation is the process by which culture, technology, and ideas from one region or social group spread to other regions or social groups over time. This process plays a critical role in social change and development, and is essential to understanding how new ideas and technologies spread and are adopted. For innovation diffusion to be successful, social, economic, and cultural factors must all work in harmony. In this context, it’s important to understand what factors can make an innovation spread faster or slower.
Geography recognizes that innovation diffusion is spatially and temporally dependent and describes the process of spatial diffusion over time in three stages: generator, diffuser, and deep saturation. During the generator phase, innovations are adopted in regions close to the source of the innovation, while those farther away are not, resulting in large regional disparities in innovation adoption rates. Early adopters of an innovation play an important role during this phase, and they are often concentrated in areas with rich economic and educational resources. The diffusion phase involves the spread of the innovation from the initial adopters to distant regions. In this process, interactions between early and later adopters increase as the benefits of the innovation gradually spread over a larger area. In particular, advances in information and communication technologies can contribute to accelerating this diffusion. In the deep, saturated phase, innovation diffusion occurs across the entire region, regardless of distance from the original source, and regional disparities in adoption rates gradually disappear.
The spatial diffusion of an innovation is explained by contagion and hierarchical diffusion. Contagious diffusion is characterized by the neighborhood effect, which states that the closer the distance between an innovation source and potential adopters, the faster the innovation spreads. The closer the distance between the source and the adopter, the more opportunities for face-to-face contact there are, so the spread of an innovation is primarily driven by personal communication rather than mass media. In this case, the initial diffusion of an innovation is often facilitated by a small number of influential individuals or groups within a community. On the other hand, hierarchical diffusion is characterized by the hierarchy effect, where the larger the city, the better the diffusion of innovation. Hierarchical diffusion allows innovations to spread from larger cities to smaller ones. This diffusion process is especially pronounced in large cities with abundant economic resources and infrastructure, and these cities function as centers of innovation. However, in the real world, both contagion and hierarchical diffusion can occur simultaneously. For example, an innovation that originates in a megacity may spread to a larger city at a greater distance, while simultaneously reaching the smaller cities surrounding the megacity.
The number of adopters of an innovation changes over time. Initially, the number of adopters grows slowly, but at some point it starts to grow rapidly and eventually saturates. This is because individual adopters differ in the timing of their adoption of an innovation. Furthermore, this diffusion curve can look different depending on the type of innovation and the characteristics of the adopter population. For example, with technological innovations, early adopters are often people who are interested in technology and have the ability to utilize it. Cultural innovations, on the other hand, have fewer such technical constraints and can spread more widely through social networks. Innovation adopters are divided into four groups based on the chronological order of their adoption: a small number of innovators, who are the first to adopt an innovation; a large number of early adopters, who adopt an innovation after a period of deliberation; a large number of late adopters, who adopt an innovation after seeing others adopt it; and a small number of tardy adopters, who are reluctant to try something new and do not adopt an innovation until much later. The interaction between these groups is an important factor in determining the rate and pattern of diffusion of an innovation.