Barriers to Adopting E-commerce in Chinese Rural Areas: A Case Study

Although e-commerce has been adopted and developed rapidly in rural areas in China during the past two years, serious issues have been encountered as well. Practitioners and scientists proposed lists of barriers. However, such lists differ with each other for different regions and at different time. Fixed lists may not help much practically. Present research proposes a framework named N3F4 to structure and formalize such barriers. Based on the framework, researchers could make a list of barriers for a given region, perform surveys among interested people, prioritize the barriers, analyze reasons and propose solutions. In this paper, we introduce the N3F4 framework, and present a case study of applying the framework in one small county in China. The result shows that the N3F4 framework helps structure barriers before performing the survey, and it also helps analyze the result and come up with solutions afterwards, both effectively and efficiently.

[1]  Christine P. W. Wong,et al.  Are Beijing’s Equalization Policies Reaching the Poor? An Analysis of Direct Subsidies Under the “Three Rurals” (Sannong) , 2012, The China Journal.

[2]  Lai Xiuyuan,et al.  PROBLEMS AND COUNTERMEASURES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ELECTRONIC COMMERCE , 2016 .

[3]  Lejla Vrazalic,et al.  E-Commerce Adoption Barriers in Small Business and the Differential Effects of Gender , 2006 .

[4]  Jinqiu Zhao,et al.  ICT4D: Internet Adoption and Usage among Rural Users in China , 2008 .

[5]  Mira Kartiwi,et al.  Perception of Barriers to E-Commerce Adoption in SMEs in a Developed and Developing Country: A Comparison Between Australia and Indonesia , 2010, J. Electron. Commer. Organ..

[6]  Japhet Eke Lawrence,et al.  Barriers to e-commerce in developing countries , 2010 .

[7]  John Krogstie,et al.  Understanding business models of mobile ecosystems in China: a case study , 2015, MEDES.

[8]  R. MacGregor,et al.  A basic model of electronic commerce adoption barriers: A study of regional small businesses in Sweden and Australia , 2005 .

[9]  T. Chitura,et al.  Barriers to Electronic Commerce Adoption in Small and Medium Enterprises: A Critical Literature Review , 2008 .

[10]  Sue Newell,et al.  The Emergence of Self-Organizing E-Commerce Ecosystems in Remote Villages of China: A Tale of Digital Empowerment for Rural Development , 2016, MIS Q..

[11]  M. Kapurubandara,et al.  Barriers to adopting ICT and e-commerce with SMEs in developing countries : an exploratory study in Sri Lanka , 2006 .

[12]  Nir Kshetri,et al.  Barriers to e-commerce and competitive business models in developing countries: A case study , 2007, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[13]  Karl W Sandberg,et al.  Barriers to adapt eCommerce by rural Microenterprises in Sweden: A case study , 2014 .

[14]  Wang Ying,et al.  Multi-agent framework for third party logistics in E-commerce , 2005, Expert Syst. Appl..

[15]  George T. Haley.  E-commerce in China Changing business as we know it , 2002 .

[16]  A. Zaied,et al.  Barriers to E-Commerce Adoption in Egyptian SMEs , 2012 .