Issues in new technology adoption in agriculture: a survey among italian tractor's users

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have a potential to contribute to achieving significant economic, social and environmental benefits in agriculture sector. However, the adoption of ICT technologies have encountered some difficulties among farmers. This paper reports investigations on the adoption of ICT in agriculture among Italian tractors users and explores their opinions on ICT technologies applied to agricultural tractor, such as global positioning system, fleet management, ISOBUS, continuous variable transmission and remote diagnostic system. A survey was conducted during the International Exhibition of Agricultural Machinery (EIMA). The results show that, while economic benefit is recognized as the primary reason to adopt new agricultural technologies, other attitudes play roles in the adoption decision of the tractor users.