Users In Rural Areas Research Articles

Accessibility of Digital Payments Methods and Challenges Faced by Users in Rural Areas of NCR: A Thematic Map Analysis

Accessibility of Digital Payments Methods and Challenges Faced by Users in Rural Areas of NCR: A Thematic Map Analysis

The Influence of Brand Trust and Customer Satisfaction on Customer Loyalty Among Shopee Users in Rural Area

The Influence of Brand Trust and Customer Satisfaction on Customer Loyalty Among Shopee Users in Rural Area

"Fact-checks are for the Top 0.1%": Examining Reach, Awareness, and Relevance of Fact-Checking in Rural India

Social media platforms have witnessed an unprecedented growth in users from rural communities in India. Many of these users are new to online information environments and are highly susceptible to misinformation. Fact-checking has the potential to reduce the proliferation and impact of misinformation; however, little is known about how fact-checking organizations in India serve rural users. To fill this gap, we conducted interviews with 12 prominent fact-checking organizations in India to understand their current practices and challenges in providing their services to rural users and the associated human and technological infrastructure they use. We discovered several measures that fact-checking organizations take to increase the reach, awareness, and relevance of fact-checked content for rural users, such as engaging with stringer networks and utilizing vernacular languages. However, fact-checking organizations also face severe challenges that limit both the scale of their work and engagement from rural users. Drawing on these findings, we provide design and policy recommendations to improve the reach, awareness, and relevance of fact-checked content for social media users in rural areas.

Tobacco use disparities in rural communities

This exploratory study described facilitators and barriers to reducing tobacco disparities in 2 small rural communities and identified ways to reduce tobacco use. This was a descriptive design using qualitative methods. We created a resource database for 2 rural Kentucky counties, using a Culture of Health Framework. We recruited 16 organizational stakeholders serving low-socioeconomic populations and conducted focus groups and key informant interviews. We also completed key informant interviews with 7 tobacco users. Lastly, we tailored Community Action Plans for each county based on the data and then solicited feedback from the key stakeholders. The 2 counties were similar in population size, but County A had fewer resources than County B, and the stakeholders expressed differences toward tobacco use and quitting. County A stakeholders talked most about the protobacco culture and that tobacco users accept the risks of smoking outweighing the benefits of quitting; they also expressed concerns about youth use and the influences of family, society, and industry. County B stakeholders described ambivalence about the health effects of use and quitting. County A's Action Plan identified an opportunity to build Community Health Worker-delivered tobacco treatment into a new school-based health center. County B's Action Plan focused on reaching tobacco users by providing incentives for participation and tailoring messages to different audiences. Tobacco control resources and stakeholder perspectives vary in small rural communities, implying a need for tailored approaches. Tobacco users in rural areas are a critical population to target with cessation resources.

Internet in the Middle of Nowhere: Performance of Geoportals in Rural Areas According to Core Web Vitals

The spatial planning system in Poland is undergoing a fundamental reform. It emphasises the digital representation of spatial data. Low performance of geoportals, no Internet access, or poor connectivity can contribute to the exclusion from the spatial planning process, and consequently to the exclusion from a specific part of public life. Considering these developments, the present study seems relevant by pointing out the issue with geoportal performance and availability of quality Internet in rural areas. The primary contribution of the article is (1) results of performance measurements for selected geoportals; (2) presentation of measuring tools and performance indices combined with methods for ad-hoc performance measuring; and (3) presentation of potential actions to improve geoportal performance on the device with which it is used. The article offers case studies where the performance of selected geoportals was tested in rural mountainous areas with limited Internet access. Five geoportals were tested with PageSpeed Insights (PSI), WebPageTest, GTmetrix, Pingdom, and GiftOfSpeed. Core Web Vitals indices were analysed: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and First Contentful Paint (FCP). The author verified values of the Speed Index and Fully Loaded Time along with other performance indices, like GTmetrix Structure. The study failed to provide unambiguous evidence that radio link users in rural areas could experience problems with geoportal performance, although the results seem to suggest it indirectly. PSI Lab Data and Field Data tests revealed a relatively low performance of the geoportals. The Performance index remained below 50 in most cases, which is ‘Poor’ according to the PSI scale. The fully loaded time exceeded 10 s for all the geoportals and 20 s in some cases (Lab Data). It means that the perceived performance of the tested geoportals on a radio link in rural areas is most probably even lower. The case studies demonstrated further that the user has limited possibilities to speed up map applications. It is possible to slightly improve the geoportal experience through the optimisation of the device locally, but the responsibility to ensure geoportal performance is mainly the publisher’s.

5G-RCOLAB: A system level simulator for 5G and beyond in rural areas

This paper describes 5G-RCOLAB, an open source simulation tool for performance evaluation of 5G/6G wireless networks in rural areas. The tool is designed with a layered architecture, based on three modules: (i) a link-level simulator of a communication channel for remote areas, with a mapping Link to System (L2S) interface; (ii) a Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-based physical layer adapted for remote areas, together with a Medium Access Control (MAC) layer that includes a novel Collaborative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) technique with security features for Byzantine attacks and spectrum usage efficiency; and (iii) an application oriented network layer that emulates the behavior of typical users in rural areas. The tool has the goal to reduce simulation complexity of large scale 5G rural networks and at the same time, to represent coherently the features of the physical and MAC layers, that include new channel models that cover long distances with the use of TV White Spaces (TVWS) in the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) and Very High Frequency (VHF) bands, as well as novel CSS techniques to improve spectrum efficiency. The 5G-RCOLAB was validated both by field test measurements from a Proof of Concept (PoC) prototype and by the simulation and evaluation of three 5G common core use cases in rural areas. The results show that the 5G-RCOLAB features allow a better evaluation of novel technologies implemented in the physical and MAC layers and provide paths for improvements and deployments of cost effective solutions of 5G in rural or remote areas.

Side Effects of the Coexistence of Tradition Medicine with Biomedicine in Primary Health Service Delivery in Rural Areas of Tanzania

It is approximated that 60-80 per cent of Tanzanians use Traditional Medicine (TM) as their primary source of health services alongside biomedical services. However, there is little information on the side effects of the co-existence of TM with biomedical system to primary health services delivery in Tanzania. By using Helmke and Levitsky’s Model of co-existence of formal and informal institutions in comparative politics, this article argues that the coexistence of TM and biomedicine undermine the delivery of primary health services in rural areas of Tanzania due to abrupt stoppage of using biomedicine among users, concurrent use of TM and biomedicine services, poor environment where Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) practice and selling of counterfeit medicine to the people. The study was carried out in Bukoba District of Tanzania, data were collected through observations, documentary review and interviews which were qualitatively analysed. The study involved 11 THPs, 30 household respondents, four (4) key respondents and five (5) biomedical practitioners who were purposively included in the study. Findings of the study call for the Government to register THPs who provide services to people while they are unregistered and to provide education on proper usage of TM among health services users in rural areas.

Assessment of the community’s technological literacy in the use of mobile phones for rural development

ABSTRACT Access and use of mobile phones by communities in rural areas is a topical issue in different countries. However, there has been limited empirical literature to account for mobile phone use in rural areas for development and lifelong learning. This study employed the data which were collected from 66 phone users in rural areas to report on their technological literacy in the use of mobile phones. The data were generated through questionnaires, focus group discussions and practical tests. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were employed to analyse the data. The analysis revealed that the majority of adults in rural communities could use mobile phones through voice calls and short messages only. Only a few of them could use mobile phones to access internet services. Financial transactions and searching for information on weather, health, politics and businesses were challenging to them. This led to the conclusion that rural communities need to be empowered to access internet services through mobile phones to enhance their socio-economic development activities. It is recommended that technological literacy programmes on the use of mobile phones and the internet to maximise productivity be implemented in rural communities that are mostly farmers and producers of raw materials.

Examining Rural and Urban Sentiment Difference in COVID-19-Related Topics on Twitter: Word Embedding-Based Retrospective Study.

By the end of 2022, more than 100 million people were infected with COVID-19 in the United States, and the cumulative death rate in rural areas (383.5/100,000) was much higher than in urban areas (280.1/100,000). As the pandemic spread, people used social media platforms to express their opinions and concerns about COVID-19-related topics. This study aimed to (1) identify the primary COVID-19-related topics in the contiguous United States communicated over Twitter and (2) compare the sentiments urban and rural users expressed about these topics. We collected tweets containing geolocation data from May 2020 to January 2022 in the contiguous United States. We relied on the tweets' geolocations to determine if their authors were in an urban or rural setting. We trained multiple word2vec models with several corpora of tweets based on geospatial and timing information. Using a word2vec model built on all tweets, we identified hashtags relevant to COVID-19 and performed hashtag clustering to obtain related topics. We then ran an inference analysis for urban and rural sentiments with respect to the topics based on the similarity between topic hashtags and opinion adjectives in the corresponding urban and rural word2vec models. Finally, we analyzed the temporal trend in sentiments using monthly word2vec models. We created a corpus of 407 million tweets, 350 million (86%) of which were posted by users in urban areas, while 18 million (4.4%) were posted by users in rural areas. There were 2666 hashtags related to COVID-19, which clustered into 20 topics. Rural users expressed stronger negative sentiments than urban users about COVID-19 prevention strategies and vaccination (P<.001). Moreover, there was a clear political divide in the perception of politicians by urban and rural users; these users communicated stronger negative sentiments about Republican and Democratic politicians, respectively (P<.001). Regarding misinformation and conspiracy theories, urban users exhibited stronger negative sentiments about the "covidiots" and "China virus" topics, while rural users exhibited stronger negative sentiments about the "Dr. Fauci" and "plandemic" topics. Finally, we observed that urban users' sentiments about the economy appeared to transition from negative to positive in late 2021, which was in line with the US economic recovery. This study demonstrates there is a statistically significant difference in the sentiments of urban and rural Twitter users regarding a wide range of COVID-19-related topics. This suggests that social media can be relied upon to monitor public sentiment during pandemics in disparate types of regions. This may assist in the geographically targeted deployment of epidemic prevention and management efforts.

Georeferenced rural distribution network model considering scalable growth of users in rural areas

This paper presents a georeferenced optimal planning model of a rural distribution network for deploying an underground network considering a real scenario for increasing electrification in this area. A model is presented based on a heuristic process that minimizes the resources required to route the grid for a defined time horizon. Then, the model is scalable according to the population density, the established and georeferenced zone, and the specified period; that is, it adjusts to any of these variables. Additionally, the modeling is presented in CYME software, considering a series of technical criteria to provide the actual scenario with a verifiable planning model of an underground network. Therefore, the voltage drop and level of overload in transformers and feeders are considered to deliver an optimum power quality to the end-user. These results will be tabulated and presented as an alternative to different planning and design models that an electric distribution company may have to minimize the resources used in an underground deployment.

Consumption Patterns of Rural Community Users of Micro-Hydro Power

One form of the environmentally friendly power plant is Micro Hydro Power (MHP). An area in East Java that uses MHP as a power source is Seloliman Village in Mojokerto. Although this village has the resources to produce electricity independently, not all residents are willing to use this energy for various reasons. This study aims to formulate consumption patterns of MHP users in rural areas based on socio-economic characteristics in development communication theory. To achieve this, quantitative research approaches and methods are used through the Near Ideal Linear Approximation Demand (LA/AIDS) system model using microdata from a survey that targets all residents in Seloliman Village up to fifty-three heads of families. Based on the results of previous studies, the researcher assumes that the consumption patterns of villagers are influenced by socioeconomic factors and the results show that in general socioeconomic characteristics play an important role in determining household energy consumption patterns

Arguments for One Radio Access Network (OneRAN) mobile infrastructure

The frequency spectrum is a scarce resource, and is owned and regulated by the state to ensure its efficient and fair utilization. All over the world, a large number of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are already involved in either active or passive Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing to maximize cost savings. The aim of this article is to challenge the ownership of individual operator’s infrastructure and present technical arguments for One Radio Access Network (OneRAN) approach for deploying a cellular network. The enormous increase in data traffic and regulatory requirements concerning public safety communications provide the basis for migrating to OneRAN infrastructure. The OneRAN approach provides an opportunity to gain technological benefits and helps in meeting the requirements of critical communication. OneRAN targets to maximize the savings on capital and operational expenses. The main focus of this work is outdoor wide-area coverage i.e., outdoor users in rural areas and on highways, as it is assumed that indoor service provision in the future requires a dedicated indoor solution. For the research work of this article, a measurement campaign was launched and different Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) of Long Term Evolution(LTE) technology for three commercial MNOs of Finland were measured over a 52 km highway from Iittala to Tampere city. The acquired results highlight the gain of OneRAN infrastructure as it enhanced the user quality of experience i.e., user throughput, especially of the critical cell border users, and improved the overall system performance economically. Finally, supportive arguments are presented for having a OneRAN infrastructure specifically over the highways.

Wheelchair User's Barriers in Physical Activity: Rural VS. Urban Area

Individuals with disabilities experience more significant challenges in carrying out physical activity than the general population. Previous studies have identified physical activity and fitness levels without measuring barriers to physical activity. This study examines how wheelchair users assess obstacles to physical activity and looks for the significant factors that hinder the biological activity of wheelchair users in urban and rural areas. The method in this research is a cross-sectional study. An online survey was used to obtain information on physical activity barriers in wheelchair users. A total of 81 respondents consisting of 40 wheelchair users from rural areas and 41 from urban areas, filled out the Barriers Physical Activity Questionnaire Mobility Impairment (BPAQ-MI) with a response rate of 70% during one month of data collection. The analysis data technique is mean, percentage, and an independent sample's T-test to compare physical activity barriers between wheelchair users in urban and rural areas. The chief obstacles to physical activity are friends and family as a support system (p<0.05), lack of public facilities (p<0.05), lack of fitness facilities and infrastructure (p<0,05), staff/program/policy (p<0.05), and community (p<0.05). The conclusion is that wheelchair users in rural areas have more significant barriers to physical activity than those in urban areas. Improving support from family, friends, environment, social policies, and a disability-friendly physical environment can be critical points in increasing the biological activity of wheelchair users in rural areas.

Drone Charging Stations Deployment in Rural Areas for Better Wireless Coverage: Challenges and Solutions

While fifth-generation (5G) cellular is meant to deliver gigabit peak data speeds, low latency, and connection to billions of devices, and 6G is already on the way, half of the world population living in rural areas are still facing challenges connecting to the internet. Compared to urban areas, users in rural areas are greatly impacted by low income, high cost of backhaul connectivity, limited resources, extreme weather, and natural geographical limitations. Therefore, how to connect the rural areas and the difficulties of providing connectivity draw great attention. This article first provides a brief discussion about existing technologies and strategies for enhancing the network coverage in rural areas, and their advantages, limitations, and cost. Next, we mainly focus on the UAV-assisted network in resource-limited regions. Considering the limitation of the onboard battery of UAVs and the electricity supply scarcity in some rural regions, we investigate the possibility and performance enhancement of the deployment of renewable energy (RE) charging stations. We outline three practical scenarios, and use simulation results to demonstrate that RE charging stations can be a possible solution to address the limited onboard battery of UAVs in rural areas, especially when they can harvest and store enough energy. Finally, future works and challenges are discussed.

Oil and gas wastewater as road treatment: radioactive material exposure implications at the residential lot and block scale

The resurgence of oil and gas extraction in the Appalachian Basin has resulted in an excess of oil and gas brines in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Primarily driven by unconventional development, this expansion has also impacted conventional wells and consequently, created economic pressure to develop effective and cheap disposal options. Using brine as a road treatment, directly or as a processed deicer, however, creates substantial concern that naturally occurring radioactive material in the brines can contaminate roads and road-side areas. Current decision making is based on risk exposure scenarios developed by regulatory agencies based on recreational users in rural areas and exposures to drivers during a typical commute. These scenarios are not appropriate for evaluating exposures to residential deicer users or people living near treated streets. More appropriate exposure scenarios were developed in this work and exposures predicted with these models based on laboratory measurements and literature data. Exposure scenarios currently used for regulatory assessment of brine road treatment result in predicted exposures of 0.4–0.6 mrem/year. Residential exposures predicted by the scenarios developed in this work are 4.6 mrem/year. If the maximum range of near-road soil radium concentrations observed in the region is used in this residential scenario (60 pCi/g 226Ra, 50 pCi/g 228Ra), residents living near these roads would be exposed to an estimated 296 mrems/year, above regulatory exposure thresholds used in nuclear facility siting assessments. These results underline the urgent need to clarify exposure risks from the use of oil and gas brines as a road treatment, particularly given the existing disparities in the distribution of road impacts across socioeconomic status.

Development Dynamics of Health and Social Infrastructure for the Long-term Care - the Case of the Posavje Region.

Background and purposeThe populations of rural areas across Europe, especially Slovenia, are ageing rapidly and the areas themselves are becoming depopulated. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to our understanding of the population dynamics and provide a method for forecasting housing and other long-term care needs.MethodThe surveys questioned those responsible for long-term care, the caretakers in institutional care, and current and potential homecare users in rural areas of Slovenia. We wanted to discover what they considered as crucial in the process of long-term care deinstitutionalization. Our 2020–2050 projections are based on the surveys conducted across 38 municipalities in the Eastern Slovenian region and an in-depth empirical study in Posavje. The results are embedded in the demographic projections and the multistate transition model of the declining functional capacities to forecast the needed housing facilities and human resources.ResultsThe results are the time series of required capacities. Around 60% of respondents in Slovenian rural areas believe that even a better organization of homecare would not allow them to stay at home until death due to inadequately built housing and the absence of a continuous presence of caregivers. These findings were included in the projections. Therefore, community care in the network of Smart Silver Villages was proposed.DiscussionInvestments are needed to renovate the housing stock of older adults and construct sheltered, assisted living housing and specialized households in the community. Moreover, proper education and training of human resources would increase the output. In addition, financial solutions are advised to develop Smart Silver Villages.

Role of Social Network Measurements in Improving Adaptive Capacity: The Case of Agricultural Water Users in Rural Areas of Western Iran

This study aims at exploring ways of increasing adaptive capacity and reducing vulnerability of farmers in the face of water scarcity through establishing a link between social network indicators and the dimensions of adaptive capacity. For this purpose, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) model along with a Structural Equation Model was developed to investigate the effects of SNA indices on the dimensions influencing the adaptive capacity of the water users in rural areas in the west of Iran. The developed model links participation in production and knowledge exchange with ten critical dimensions identified to affect the adaptive capacities of water resources users. The results indicated that the most important subdimensions affecting adaptive capacity were governance, innovation, and awareness. Also, the positive effects of individual and whole network level of indices on the adaptive capacity indicated high coherence in the study area and the ability of people to develop social learning to improve the adaptive capacity.

Users’ Experiences of Mobile Financial Services at Rural Areas of Bangladesh

Mobile Financial Services (MFS) is one of the new innovations of the modern financial system. It nowadays plays a crucial role in banking users’ day-to-day financial activities. This study investigates users’ experiences of MFS at rural areas of Bangladesh. Specifically, this study sought to gain an understanding of to what extent different factors positively or negatively influence users’ experience in using mobile financial services. This study was mainly a survey research. The data were obtained using a questionnaire from a total of 128 MFS users (102 male and 26 female) living in rural areas of Bangladesh who were conveniently chosen from five Upazilla in Barishal city. The findings suggested that MFS users in rural areas of Bangladesh have both positive and negative experiences toward the use of mobile financial services. This study further revealed six major factors that have influenced the users’ positive and negative experiences in general, i.e. perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, trust, customer and MFS agent relationship, and perceived cost. It was found that the last factor (perceived cost) have generated the users’ negative experiences toward mobile financial services. Therefore, the government and MFS providers are encouraged to work together with some innovative strategies to change the users’ negative experiences into positive experiences of using the mobile financial services.

Characteristics of Citizens and Their Use of Teleconsultations in Primary Care in the Catalan Public Health System Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Retrospective Descriptive Cross-sectional Study.

BackgroundeConsulta—that is, asynchronous, two-way teleconsultation in primary care—is one of the most important telemedicine developments in the Catalan public health system, a service that has been heavily boosted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is vital to know the characteristics of its users in order to be able to meet their needs and understand the coverage of this service in a context where there is reduced accessibility to the health system.ObjectiveThis study aims to analyze the profile of the citizens who use the eConsulta tool and the reasons for their use, as well as to gain an understanding of the elements that characterize their decision to use it while distinguishing between those who used it before and those who have used it since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA descriptive, observational study based on administrative data was performed. This study differentiates between the COVID-19 pandemic era and the period preceding it, considering the day the state of emergency was declared in Spain (ie, March 12, 2020) as the cut-off point. It also differentiates between eConsulta users who send messages and those who only receive them.ResultsDuring the pandemic, the number of unique users of this teleconsultation service had almost tripled, with up to 33.10 visits per 1000 inhabitants per month reported in the first three months. For the two user profiles analyzed, most users since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak were predominantly female, systematically younger, more actively employed, and with less complex pathologies. Furthermore, eConsulta users received more messages proactively from the health professionals. There was also a relative decrease in the number of conversations initiated by higher-income urban users and an increase in conversations initiated by users in rural areas.ConclusionsThe COVID-19 pandemic has helped to generalize the use of telemedicine as a tool to compensate, to some extent, for the decline in face-to-face visits, especially among younger citizens in Catalonia. Telemedicine has made it possible to maintain contact between citizens and the health care system in the context of maximum complexity.

Can Telementoring Reduce Urban-Rural Disparities in Utilization of Direct-Acting Antiviral Agents?

Background: Expanding access to direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) for treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the national goal for HCV elimination, but important urban-rural disparities exist in DAA use. Evidence is needed to evaluate intervention efforts to reduce urban-rural disparities in DAA utilization. Methods: We used Medicare data to compare DAA use between urban HCV patients and rural HCV patients in two states: State A with a telementoring approach to train rural providers to treat HCV patients and State B without such an intervention. We focused on DAA utilization among newly diagnosed HCV patients in 2014-2016 and defined DAA use as filling at least one prescription of DAAs during 2014-2017. We classified patient's urban-rural status based on their ZIP code of residence. We assessed overtime changes in urban-rural disparities in DAA utilization for each state using multivariable cause-specific Cox regression analyses with time-varying hazard ratios. Results: Among 1,872 new HCV patients in State A, 135 (17.00%) rural patients and 243 (22.54%) urban patients received DAAs in 2014-2017. Although there was noticeable urban-rural disparities in DAA use during the first 24 months of follow-up (hazard ratios [HRs] = 0.73 [0.51 to 1.03] for 0-12 months and 0.61 [0.39 to 0.95] for 13-24 months), the disparities became nonsignificant afterward (HR = 1.06 [0.58 to 1.93] after 24 months). Most DAA users in rural areas (94, 70%) in State A received DAAs prescribed by primary care providers (PCPs). In State B, among 8,928 new HCV patients, 227 (18.22%) rural patients and 1,600 (20.83%) urban patients received DAAs in 2014-2017. Rural patients were less likely to receive DAAs over time (HR = 1.12 [0.93 to 1.36] in the first 12 months and HR = 0.62 [0.40 to 0.96] after 24 months). Only 81 (36%) DAA users in rural areas in State B were treated by PCPs. Conclusions: Our study suggests that the telementoring approach may help reduce urban-rural disparities in DAA utilization.