Mobile Broadband for the Farmers: A Case Study of Technology Adoption by Cocoa Farmers in Southern East Java, Indonesia

The objective of this paper is to examine the factors that affect Indonesia cocoa farmer intention to use mobile phone application. The main factors examined in this study are perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), business factors and individual factors. The study sample consists of 191 respondents in thirteen cocoa farmer centers in southern East Java. Data were analyzed by employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that the user intention on adopting mobile phone application especially by cocoa farmers is significantly impacted by social influence and this is in line with the massive growth the usage of social media application in Indonesia, other factors that determine the adoption are competitiveness pressure and cost perception. This research has a limitation that the generalizability of the findings is limited to the geographical scope of the sample. Based on findings, as the practical implications of this study, to get a higher rate on the adoption of mobile phone application, stakeholders need to ensure the benefit of technology adoption by providing more secure, more comfort, and more sounds like cloud ecosystem to increase the perception on ease of use and perception of usefulness. Novelty of this study is the combination of business factors and individual factors on the existing model of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).