Page 65 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

064 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 8, 2016

internal and external motivations (F. D. Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989; F. D. Davis, Bagozzi, &
Warshaw, 1992) and emotional experiences of technologies (Thompson, Higgins, & Howell, 1991).
The last category relates directly with features of technologies, i.e., suitability of technology with
applying surroundings, impacts of technologies on promoting individuals’ appearance, inspecting
degree of technologies in organizations (Moore & Benbasat, 1991), and the like. In the information
practice, all the four groups of describing variables are posing influences on the three degrees of
technology accepting process, which are reactions to applications of technology, emergence of
technology using intentions, and practical using behaviors, and their transformation. To be mentioned,
traditional research in technology acceptance behaviors focuses on access to and primary usage of
target technologies, not caring about sustainable usage behavior of technologies. In comparison with
narrow definition of technology acceptance behavior, sustainable usage behavior of new technology
is affected by various contextual factors and technical factors, and decides whether or not the agents
will use some technology in a continuous way (Ardichvili, Page, & Wentling, 2003; Chen, 2007). On
the other hand, in the research context of rural digital poverty, ICT access to and sustainable usage of
information behavior agents are the key points of digital poverty alleviation. Hence, ICT acceptance
behavior in context of rural digital poverty could employ the traditional concepts of technology
acceptance, and moreover the wider technology acceptance behavior including access to ICT, usage of
ICT and expectations of ICT (expectation on sustainable usage).

2 Research design

Research questions in the paper are: how about the three stages of ICT acceptance behavior by
rural residents, covering access, usage and expectations? How do core constructs of technology
acceptance and continuous usage such as gender, age, profession, and social capital impact the
three stages of ICT acceptance behavior and their conversion process? By borrowing the traditional
technology acceptance theory, how will the digital poverty expand towards an all-round-way
description of relations between rural digitally poor communities and ICT?
The three dimensions for measuring digital poverty which consist of access, usage and
expectations of ICT correspond with different degrees of relations between rural residents and ICT,
and diverse portraits of their digital poverty. Access to ICT by rural residents refers to ownership
and using rights to ICT such as cell phones, personal computers and the Internet. On the access
level, being lack of ICT devices defines the digital poverty for rural residents. Usage of ICT by
rural residents means the using status of private and public ICT devices, which describes the digital
poverty of rural residents as low frequency of ICT devices and rare situations of getting access to
information actively through ICT. The expectations on ICT by rural residents are measured by their
hopes on ICT skills, information reached by digital devices, and changes to life and work posed by
ICT. Digital poverty on expectation level is represented by shortage of motivations of learning ICT
skills, and low needs and aspirations on information by ICT devices.