Factors affecting farmers’ willingness to adopt a mobile app in the marketing of bamboo products

Abstract

Although the advent of new technologies and online platforms has revolutionized the face of marketing in agriculture sector, little study exists to assess the farmers’ willingness to adopt (WTA) such technologies for their products. Here, we assessed this WTA for a mobile app – the Bamboost for marketing bamboo products and determined the related factors in municipality of Maasin in Iloilo province of Philippines, where 112 farmers were interviewed using the purposive sampling method. Extended Technology Acceptance Model was used to assess the WTA through the analysis of farmers’ perceived usefulness (PU), ease of use (PEOU), innovativeness (PI), social influence (SI), Information Awareness (IA), cost (PC), and socio-demographic factors. We found that PU, PEOU, PI, SI, and farm size had positive correlation and statistically significance at 1% (p <0.001). However, the perceived cost had significant negative influence on farmers’ WTA because of their concerns about the overall cost such as costs for mobile data, transaction, and downloading. To promote the use of the mobile app such as Bamboost to farmers, it is important that government develop enabling policies to reduce the costs of the technology adoption, which could result in rural poverty reduction. Nevertheless, to increase wider adoption beyond the study area, study on farmers’ perceptions at different locations and after the app is introduced can provide the needed information for a better-informed decision making that is beneficial to farmers as well as the technology suppliers.