The Role of Perceived Benefits, Environmental Identity, and Social Influence in the Adoption of Green Agricultural Technologies: A Study on the Extended Technology Acceptance Model

This study investigates factors influencing the acceptance of environmentally friendly agricultural technologies through a survey of 462 farmers in Konya Province, Türkiye. An expanded version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is used to incorporate the constructs of perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), social influence (SI), and facilitating conditions (FC) as well as environmental psychology constructs of environmental identity (EI) and the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis demonstrates that facilitating conditions (β=0.605, p<0.001) are the most influential factor toward behavioral intention along with perceived usefulness (β = 0.257, p<0.001) and perceived ease of use (β=0.112, p<0.01). The relationship between behavioral intention and usage behavior (β=0.880, R²=0.532) indicates a strong positive relationship between these two variables. In contrast, the expected positive effect of environmental identity (β=-0.243, p<0.001) is supported by the literature’s discussion of the ecological concern paradox. Quality measures for the structural model (R² =0.594; Q² =0.584) indicate both explanatory and predictive capability. The sample size was determined based on the proportionally representative sampling method suggested by Newbold (1995). The research is expected to contribute to the literature by incorporating environmental psychology constructs into TAM.