Journal Press India^®

Author Details ( * ) denotes Corresponding author

The major challenge in India’s agricultural sector is to create and improve the existing agriculture infrastructure which can improve the livelihood of rural masses. Penetration of mobile phones in India in the last 10 years has grown tremendously. Many service providers have emerged as players in this market providing a portfolio of services to consumers. Mobile-enabled information services have been introduced in agri-business to empower farmers with updated information related to farming and marketing of agricultural produce. The objective of this paper is to explore the potential of mobile phones and mobile-enabled agricultural services in improving the agricultural performance of farmers. Farmers are benefiting from better access to information through mobile phones on seed variety selection, weather update, crop diseases and getting a better market price for their produce. Farmers equipped with information have a stronger bargaining position within existing trade relationships. The study adopted the constructs of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, self-efficacy, attitude of the respondent (farmer) and behavioural intention to measure mobile adoption behaviour of farmers in agriculture. Factor analysis and regression analysis are used to identify factors significantly affecting behavioural intention of adopting mobile technology and reach an effective conclusion.

Keywords

Mobile telephony; Agriculture; Information access; Behavioural intention

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