Page 70 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

YAN Hui & LIU Jiqun / ICT acceptance behavior of rural digital poverty communities: 069
Field reports from China’s six provinces and municipalities

As showed in Table 2, although most of the typical interviewees own mobile phones, only a
small portion of them (fourteen) can get access the mobile Internet. Most interviewees (eighteen)
have no access to personal computers at home, and moreover only fifteen interviewees possess
access to the Internet through computer. It follows that ICT acceptance behaviors in rural areas
differ from each other among various connected communities except distinctions between ICT
connected communities and disconnected ones. Therefore, the degree of rural residents’ digital
poverty not only depends on whether or not they have access to some kind of ICT device, but also
on how to use the devices (with or without network access).
When referring to variables impacting practical ICT access behaviors, we discovered ICT
perceptions of rural residents become intermediate variables. By coding analysis of interview
texts, ICT perceptions of rural digitally poor communities include four variables: perceived ICT
usefulness, perceived ease of ICT use, perceived self-efficacy of ICT learning, and negative
perception of ICT. Self-efficacy of ICT learning refers to the subjective judgments on ICT
learning abilities. Negative perception of ICT means their perceived negative effects and degrees
from ICT. Among the rural digitally poor individuals, perceived ICT usefulness and perceived
ease of ICT use generally originate from their constructed concepts and subjective assumptions
based on related information segments, for instance, learning and using experiences from
others, seldom from their own ICT using experiences. In the rural life and work contexts, the
residents usually regard computers as luxury for top classes, elite communities, and the virtual
world, having no relation with farming and rural lives. On the other hand, ICT devices like
computers and cell phones are difficult to learn and manipulate, and therefore the digitally poor
communities tend to self-attribute their poverty to no time and abilities for learning ICT. They
think that they are busy with farming and have no experience on computers and cell phones.
The aged rural residents are more likely to deny their ICT learning capabilities, and furthermore
do not try to get access to computers, cell phones and networks. Moreover, rural parents,
especially young mothers insist that computers and the Internet are entertaining tools and have
no close relation with school study. They assume that their children would like to play computer
games and therefore they will be distracted from high grades. In consideration of such possible
negative effects, they refuse to buy computers and network connection services for their homes
to guarantee their children to earn good grades in School. We define the opinion as entertaining
perception or harmful perception of ICT devices(H. Yan & X. M.Yan, 2014). As key bonding
social capital, neighbors and friends can be assistance for their emerging difficulties in using
ICT(M. Wang & H. Yan, 2013). The more acquaintances who can use the Internet, the higher
their perceived ease of use and self-efficacy of ICT learning they will earn, and more possibilities
they will have to gain their access to digital devices. Typical descriptions on their perceptions of
ICT are summed up in Table 3.