Page 77 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

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

so called subjective perception, includes direct perceptions of ICT devices by digitally poor
communities such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, negative perception, ICT using
perceptions and experiences, self-efficacy and perceived information needs. Third, observable
ICT practice and expectations produced by interactions between digitally poor communities and
ICT devices, covering ICT acceptance behaviors, ICT usage behaviors and ICT expectations. The
objective inherent factors like age, occupation and social capital are fundamental reasons for rural
residents to suffer digital poverty. The poor individuals will not try to break through their current
subjective characteristics and contexts, because it is very difficult, time-consuming and expensive.
For instance, they can change occupation, increase income or gain more ICT related social capital.
Furthermore, with limitations of various objective conditions such as older ages, long time farming
without opportunities of access to modern ICT devices, or large life pressure in family, the ICT
perceptions by rural digitally poor communities are one-sided, limited, and even screwy. Many
rural residents regard computers and network as entertaining tools, insisting that there is no relation
between ICT and farming, and they are harmful for study of their children. Besides, some rural
residents are struggling with separation of traditional agricultural production from network because
of their farming career, and think that it is unnecessary for themselves to get access to computers
and the Internet. Their diverse perception of information needs is limited because of simplicity
and repetitiveness of farming. Finally, they confront barriers on ICT access behaviors, usage
behaviors, and expectations to different degrees, because they perceive ICT usage, self-efficacy
and information demands in abnormal ways. Such barriers include the following statements:
computer is not useful; they have no strong desires to get access to ICT devices; they do not think
they have abilities to manipulate computers; they have lower frequency and interests in using
ICT devices; they gain limited computer using experiences, thus their consciousness of meeting
information needs by ICT devices. And so forth, they are gradually challenged by digital poverty. It
is hard to discover the individual case with strong will of digital poverty alleviation in the research
by restrictions of objective characteristics and contexts. Therefore, subjective perception of ICT
by rural digitally poor communities poses obvious and strong effects on digital poverty. If we
connect personal characteristics and social factors directly with ICT acceptance behaviors, those
intermediate transmission factors would be ignored.

4 Conclusions

Based on evidence collected from field studies in six provinces and municipalities, we expand
technology acceptance concept in the context of information behaviors of rural residents, and
propose three stages of ICT acceptance behaviors: ICT access behaviors, ICT using behaviors
and ICT expectations. Furthermore, we discover layered transmission relations from objective
characteristics and contexts to subjective perceived ICT factors, and then to practical ICT
acceptance behaviors. This theoretical model has three groups of value. Firstly, the three-layered