Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Why do people adopt innovations at different rate? Studies from the diffusion of innovations and network models suggest that network structure and properties provide good explanations of the influence mechanism about how attitudes and behaviors change. The study investigates the adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) among U.S. hospitals with network methods and models. Three research questions are addressed. First, what is the structure of the networks among hospitals? Second, how does the presence of network contribute to the diffusion of EMR? And third, what network-based policies can accelerate the adoption? The study employs network analysis tools, event history models and agent based modeling to present the structure of the network, its role in the diffusion process and to test different policy scenarios.