Page 74 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

YAN Hui & LIU Jiqun / ICT acceptance behavior of rural digital poverty communities: 073
Field reports from China’s six provinces and municipalities

3.3 ICT expectations

Expectations on ICT by rural residents, the final stage of ICT acceptance behaviors, are the key
influential factors for them to use ICT continuously. We care about using expectations on computer
and mobile network from rural digitally poor communities, and try to answer the following
questions: what kinds of information do they expect to get access to through computer and mobile
networks? What factors promote or limit the forming of the expectations? What are the relations
between the stage of ICT expectation and other two stages stated above?
During the in-depth interviews, we discover the forming of ICT expectations is rarely influenced
directly by age, educational level and external social surroundings, while closely relates with
perceived information needs in living and career surroundings, perceptions of ICT usage, and
usage experiences. Such perceptions and experiences originate from their own directly using
experiences, and possibly from observing others’ indirect usage experiences. In the participant
observation session, those interviewees who participated in our computer training experiments
gained some degree of computer skills and experiences, and more importantly their desires and
expectations were obviously promoted. They were willing to increase their usage frequency of ICT
devices, and expect to get access to more diverse information by computer networks. At the same
time, the perceived ease of use and self-efficacy of ICT learning were lifted to higher levels. Being
familiar with modern digital devices like computers and the Internet can assist rural digitally poor
communities to increase their cognitions of ICT, and change their traditional social norms that
computers are only entertaining tools, and the notion that network has no relation with agriculture
and rural lives. Their information literacy will be promoted finally in the process of digital poverty
alleviation.
Therefore, forming and diversity of ICT expectations are conscious basis for future continuous
using of ICT devices by rural residents. Their expectations have connections with the subjective
perceptions and experiences produced by ICT access, ICT usage. Successful and positive
computer networks usage experiences could increase their usage desires and expectations;
while negative usage experiences will limit their expectations, and turn them to traditional ways
to get information, for example, social relations, TV, and broadcasting. Such correlation has
been proved in another field study report (H. Yan & X. M.Yan, 2014). The thirty interviewees
were looking forward to more chances in learning knowledge of computers and networks,
and proposed the main information needs by network listed in Table 6. The typical impacts of
cognitive factors on ICT expectations by rural digitally poor communities are summarized in
Table 7, and also the interacting relations among different cognitive factors in the context of ICT
usage.