Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
Everett Rogers categorized members of a social system into five adopter categories based on their innovativeness: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.
Each category is associated with a distinctive socio-psychological profile.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Each adopter category is characterized by a primary descriptor:
Innovators - Venturesome: They are eager to try new ideas, willing to accept risks, possess high financial liquidity to absorb potential failures, and are highly cosmopolite.
Early Adopters - Respectable: They serve as opinion leaders in their local social system and are respected by their peers as role models for adopting innovations.
Early Majority - Deliberate: They adopt new ideas just before the average member of a system, deliberate carefully before adopting, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership.
Late Majority - Skeptical: They adopt innovations out of economic necessity or peer pressure, approaching new ideas with a high degree of skepticism.
Laggards - Traditional: They are oriented toward the past, possess almost no opinion leadership, and are highly skeptical of innovations.
Step 4: Final Answer:
The characteristic that describes an innovator is Venturesome, which corresponds to option (A).