Paper Info
Title
Why Don't Farmers Use Cell Phones to Access Market Prices? Technology Affordances and Barriers to Market Information Services Adoption in Rural Kenya
Abstract
AbstractProviding smallholder farmers with agricultural information could improve economic development, by helping them to grow more crops, which they could then sell for more money. Widespread mobile phone ownership in Africa means that, for the first time, there is a realistic opportunity to deliver pertinent information to remote farmers throughout the continent. Efforts to harness the potential of mobile phones include the development of agricultural market information services MIS – applications that send farmers crop pricing information via short message service or SMS. These services promote economic development among some farmers in the developing world, but not yet in rural Kenya. To understand what factors impede the adoption of these services, we qualitatively studied Kenyan farmers’ mobile phone usage patterns and their interactions with MFarm, a commercially available MIS. Using affordance theory to guide our analysis, we discovered a mismatch between the design of MIS and smallholder farmers’ perceptions of their mobile phones’ communication capabilities. We use these findings to motivate a design agenda that encourages software developers and development practitioners to adopt an ecological perspective when creating mobile applications for sub-Saharan Africa's rural farmers. Strategies for implementing this approach include reconsidering the design of mobile phones, and developing innovative educational interventions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1080/02681102.2015.1048184
Periodicals
Keywords
Field
DocType
human-computer interaction, market information services, affordance theory, agriculture, rural, Kenya
Information system,Short Message Service,Economics,Environmental resource management,Market price,Developing country,Agriculture,Mobile phone,Affordance,Marketing,Kenya
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
22
2
0268-1102
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
14
1.00
8
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Susan P. Wyche138927.40
Charles Steinfield23754351.29