  A vast class of disordered conducting-insulating compounds close to the
percolation threshold is characterized by nonuniversal values of transport
critical exponent t, in disagreement with the standard theory of percolation
which predicts t = 2.0 for all three dimensional systems. Various models have
been proposed in order to explain the origin of such universality breakdown.
Among them, the tunneling-percolation model calls into play tunneling processes
between conducting particles which, under some general circumstances, could
lead to transport exponents dependent of the mean tunneling distance a. The
validity of such theory could be tested by changing the parameter a by means of
an applied mechanical strain. We have applied this idea to universal and
nonuniversal RuO2-glass composites. We show that when t > 2 the measured
piezoresistive response \Gamma, i. e., the relative change of resistivity under
applied strain, diverges logarithmically at the percolation threshold, while
for t = 2, \Gamma does not show an appreciable dependence upon the RuO2 volume
fraction. These results are consistent with a mean tunneling dependence of the
nonuniversal transport exponent as predicted by the tunneling-percolation
model. The experimental results are compared with analytical and numerical
calculations on a random-resistor network model of tunneling-percolation.
