Abstract
While information technology is playing a significant transformative role in virtually every industry, within the agriculture sector, family-operated farming enterprises have been slow to adopt IT solutions to manage their operations. This study adopts a sequential mixed-methods research design to examine the pre- and post-adoption phases of farmers’ use of a mobile digital platform for farm management. Our findings show that farmers’ initial acceptance of a mobile digital platform for farm management is shaped by social influence, which mediates the impact of performance and effort expectancy. Post-adoption continued use of the digital platform is influenced directly by performance and effort expectancy and indirectly by trust beliefs and social influence. Perceived work impediment indirectly influences post-adoption acceptance via effort expectancy. Our study untangles the direct and indirect influences of positive and negative perceptions on farmers’ acceptance of a new innovative AgriTech digital platform in these different phases.
Highlights
Adoption and diffusion of digital technologies have attracted a large volume of interest across the disciplines of management and information systems
Since the 1980s, researchers have been engaged in research efforts that seek to explain the factors that contribute to technology adoption, which have culminated in a welldeveloped stream of literature [13]
The qualitative transcripts were analyzed to explore the relevance of positive and negative factors discussed in the technology adoption and continuance literature
Summary
Adoption and diffusion of digital technologies have attracted a large volume of interest across the disciplines of management and information systems. Despite seminal research being inspired and focusing on the diffusion and adoption of agricultural technologies [8], there exists a paucity of technology adoption studies that shed light on farmers initial adoption and on-going usage behaviors of digital platforms that assist with farm management. This gap requires exploration given the significant economic importance of agriculture in most countries around the world. Our research study seeks to understand technology adoption in the context of a mobile, cloud-based digital platform for farm management by family-operated farming enterprises in Ireland. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contributions, limitations, and directions for future research
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