In this paper, we reconsider the appropriateness of certain statistical analyses in innovation adoption studies and suggest that partial observability models may sometimes be more useful. The proposed models allow for a flexible specification of the process of adoption from one stage to two stages, facilitate the modelling of non-adopters and remedy the violation of the assumption of full information. An application to the adoption of organic cultivation in Greece demonstrates the relative merits of the proposed analysis. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.