Trust in the Adoption of Internet of Things for Smart Agriculture in Developing Countries

Abstract

Trust in online environments is based on beliefs in the trustworthiness of a trustee, which is composed of three distinct dimensions - integrity, ability, and benevolence. Zimbabwe has slowly adopted Internet of Things for smart agriculture as a way of improving on food security in the country, though there is hesitancy by most farmers citing trust issues as monitoring of crops, animals and farm equipment’s would be done online through connecting several devices and accessing data. Farmers are facing difficulties in trusting that the said technology has the ability to perform as expected in a specific situation or to complete a required task, i.e. if the technology will work consistently and reliably in monitoring the environment, nutrients, temperatures and equipment status. The integrity of the collected data as it will be used for decision making. There is a growing need to determine how trust in the technology influence the adoption of IoT for smart agriculture in Zimbabwe. The mixed methodology was used to gather data from 50 A2 model farmers randomly sampled in Zimbabwe. The findings revealed that McKnight etal. trust in technology model can be used to influence the adoption of IoT through trusting that the technology will be reliable and will operate as expected.Additional constructs such as security and distrust of technology can be used as reference for future research.