Rural Household Adoption of SSTs (Self-Service Technologies) - An Economic Development Perspective

Abstract

Many rural developmental programs have not yielded expected success by union and state governments in the country. When government or private sector systematically makes a forge into rural sector by offering the people quality services and if rural people consume the same optimally after coming out of certain conservative norms, then business opportunities may emerge as technological change is one such force. As RRBs, and lead development banks are operating around rural areas they can focus on getting the SSTs installed where it facilitates rural population to use the technologically interfaced service for transactions beyond banking hours. The challenge is to make them (rural people) adopt the technology. After many researchers determining the occurrences of attitudes, behavioral intentions towards self service technology and role of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use in formation of attitude, researchers worldwide have concluded that online driven SSTs such as internet banking will be hard to adopt by customers. But the same is not true with ATMs. Service providers have reaped best of the results in urban areas by providing very personalized services with the help of ATMs. The same can be applied to the SSTs in the rural areas if certain factors are considered and well confronted. There should be repurchase of service through SST by these individuals to call it as a successful adoption. This conceptual paper takes a view of applying SST concept on rural areas as true India lives in rural sector. The Indian rural segment as the world knows retain a very reserved attitude towards all innovation outside their village premises. This paper also makes an attempt of constructing a rural technological change model that may trigger development in rural India.