Diffusion of innovation in modeling anti-sex trafficking policy adoption

Abstract

Because sex trafficking is a global phenomenon, the United Nations placed a call to action to its member nations to develop a comprehensive sex trafficking policy. As might be anticipated, variation occurred among nations in developing policy initiatives. The literature points to this variation but little has been published on understanding the underlying components of the variation. In this article, the characteristics of innovators, the environmental context, and the innovation of comprehensive sex trafficking policy, categorized into nodality, authority, organization, and treasure, are conceptualized, using a diffusion of innovations theoretical framework. Additionally, international indices of the Human Development Index, the Gender Disparity Index, and the Gender Empowerment Measurement are operationalized within the proposed diffusion of innovations model for anti-sex trafficking policy adoption.

Trialability, observability and risk reduction accelerating individual innovation adoption decisions

“…Analagous to studies of policies supporting the spread of scientific methods of enquiry between nations (Arnold, 2000;Basalla, 1967), Gross (1972) identified three factors operating in the context of overseas aid and development programmes that increase the diffusion of management techniques between nations: educational activities, selecting sectors with relatively poor performance and using understatement of potential benefits as the main style of persuasion. Recently, policy-driven efforts to increase the rate of adoption of existing innovations have attracted study in fields as diverse as climate change (Diaz-Rainey, 2009) and anti-sex trafficking policy (Minnick, 2012). This has led to development of the concept of induced diffusion (Diaz-Rainey, 2009), and a revival of interest in the rate of innovation diffusion in social systems.…”