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The global research evidences indicate that the technology adoption in case of agribusiness has a potential to enhance the performance and bring operational efficiency. India is the world’s largest producer as well as consumer of milk but struggles with yield per cattle, overall productivity, low rate of technology acceptance and adoption, health detection of milching units, animal data recording and presence of dairy products in the global market. The purpose of this study is to focus on identifying the challenges of technology adoption in dairy farms and constructing a hierarchical model using soft systems methodology.

This study uses nominal group technique-based discussion with domain experts and personal interviews with dairy farm owners/managers for the identification of challenges, fuzzy interpretative structural modeling as well as FMICMAC to develop a hierarchical model of challenging elements and to divide the identified elements into four categories based on the dominance of driving-dependence power.

This research has developed a list of 12 challenges affecting the technology adoption in a dairy farm business unit, identified through the personal interviews with 60 dairy farms across three highest milk-producing states of India in terms of annual milk output – Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Lack of government support followed by lack of educational opportunities in dairy-based education were found as the most crucial and high driving challenges, whereas high cost, huge investment and low acceptance of decision-maker were found as the most dependent challenges of technology adoption.

This research is one step ahead of interpretive structural modeling that considers the fuzzy-based dominance in the model to showcase the degree of relationship along with its existence, but it lacks to statistically validate the findings using techniques like SEM.

This paper has developed a list of challenges in adoption of technology along with their inter-relationships to highlight the required focus challenge that drives or is dependent on the other challenges. The goal is to bring performance improvement and assist Indian dairy farm business stakeholders or decision-makers in formulating strategic and action plans and help policy planners to make favorable policies based on the understanding of contextual relationship between challenges.

In Indian context, dairy is an important part of agriculture sector, and milk is an essential item that facilitates income generation to small and rural households and a source item for several other businesses and activities. The results of this research suggested the policy planners and government to ensure subsidized and insured technologies, training support and facilities, educational opportunities and efforts for promotion of technology adoption among dairy farmers. The suggestions are purely on the basis of the relevance of challenges in the hierarchy and can play a significant role in improving the level of technology adoption and can ultimately uplift the social and economic well-being from micro-level of farmers to macro-stage concerning economic development of India.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is purely original and outcome of the research conducted by authors.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the internet user behavior, in an online environment, varying due to benefits and risks of social networking sites (SNS). This study focuses on the influence of benefits and risks of SNS on an internet user’s participation and tests the developed research framework.

A conceptual framework has been developed after reviewing relevant literature followed by hypothesis framing. The framework considers two benefits of using SNS, i.e., utilitarian and hedonic benefits, and two risks online, i.e., word-of-mouth skepticism and online privacy concerns, determining the effect of these four variables on online participation and its effect on online social capital. An advanced PLS-SEM has been used to test the research hypothesis and to test framework. This study is based on a descriptive survey and the data have been collected using online questionnaires. The users of SNS have been targeted as respondents using purposive sampling method.

This study proposed a positive relationship of utilitarian benefits with online participation while negative relationship of word-of-mouth (WOM) skepticism, and it affirms that online participation is linked significantly in a positive manner with online social capital.

The study is limited to some specific aspects of SNS, and other dimensions may provide newer scope for this research. The research provides a managerial implication, depicting that inculcation of benefit factors and reduction in the risk factors into the SNS or company websites would lead to an increased participation of users.

This research signifies the potential for further research and recommends the tactics for companies to use SNS by identifying benefit factors that encourage participation and it also recommends to proactively take steps to minimize effects of potential risks and challenges in an online environment.