Understanding attitudes toward adoption of green infrastructure: A case study of US municipal officials

The goal of this research was to identify attitudes that engineers, planners, and other local government staff have toward adopting GSI strategies in municipalities

The objective of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical model grounded in technology acceptance, diffusion of innovation and organizational theories to identify factors that influence attitudes of local jurisdiction officials toward adoption of green infrastructure for stormwater management. The hypotheses are tested using survey data on green infrastructure collected from 256 local governments’ engineers, planners and other municipal officials across the US. Findings of structural equation modeling analyses partially support a hypothesis regarding the link between innovation characteristics and attitudes toward adoption, revealing that perceived usefulness has a significant direct influence on attitudes. They also confirm significant indirect effects of perceived compatibility, perceived internal readiness and perceived ease of use of green infrastructure on respondents’ attitudes toward adoption. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, this study assesses the applicability of a model combining elements of technology acceptance, diffusion of innovation and organizational theory to predict municipal officials’ attitudes toward green infrastructure. Second, it uncovers relevant innovation attributes explaining attitudes toward green stormwater infrastructure adoption.

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