Mobile Services In Rural China: Adoption Model And Development Policies

Recent years, mobile teleconmunicatin was devoping very fast in China, mobile business based mobile telecommunication technology was applicated in many areas. In constructing the Socialist New Countryside and rural informationizing, rural mobile business started to applicate. Applicating rural mobile business will accelerate rural informationizing. A lot of questions need to be answered in Rural mobile business developing, such as what is the characteristic of rural users'needs and behaviors, how to utilize the advantiges of mobile business in rural area, which mobile business models suit for rural China and how can they spread. This dissertation studies mobile business application in rural China based on a series of empirical studies and case studies.This thesis reviewed the literatures of mobile business acceptance and classified their theory model. The basis theory models in mobile bsiness acceotance researches were TRA (Theory of Reasoned Action), TPB (Theory of Planned Behavior), IDT (Inovation diffusion Theory), TAM (Technology Acceptacne Model) and TTF (Task-Technology Fit). An adoption model of Rural Mobile Business is constructed on the basis of previous acceptance research of mobile business and information technology. Based TAM, IDT and TTF, the rural mobile business acceptance model integrated the main construsts of UTAUT, cost of use, perceived trust and satisfaction with the mobile business services providers.Despite of some progresss has been made in Rural Infomationizing, there are many questions, such as modern information technologies still don't become the main source of rural and agricultural information and construct of the rural information infrastructure is laggard. Information can promote the efficiency and benefit of agriculture produce process. But the empirical study result of agriculture production function based panel data showed that the input of informationizaiotn didn't promote the agricultural output significantly in recent years. With the advantage of mobility, conwenience and flexibility the mobile communication technology should promote the performance of agricultural output.There were two main rural mobile business application brands in China,China Mobile"Agritultural Information Connection"and China Unicom"Agricultural New Space Time". They provided abundant information services in rural China."Agritultural Information Connection"had more users and"Agricultural New Space Time"pay more attention to business application. By analysing based Task-Technology Fit, rural mobile business technology can support the whole process of agricultural production and promote the performance of agriculture.The mobile information service was one of the most widely used mobile applications. The results of empirical study based SEM(Structured Equation Modeling) with questionnaire data showed that the social influences, effort expectation(ease of use) and perceived satisfaction of the mobile service provider significantly affect the rural users'behaviour intention of rural mobile information service directly; the effect of performance expectation(usefulness), trust and ease of use to intention via the medirator satisfaction; behavior of use positively impact by intention, satisfaction and facility conditions; the cost of use was a drawback factor for use.This research proposed three business models of rural mobile business combined mobile technology with real need of rural users. They are rural mobile information service model, rural mobile marketing model and rural mobile transaction model. Rural mobile information service model provide abundant information related to rural production and daily life in time; rural mobile marketing model support the marketing activities aim to get more rural users and market share; rural mobile traansaction model help to buy and sell agricultural product, agricultural means of production and consumer goods. Government at all levels and enterpeises shoud take certain policies to promote more rural mobile business services are provided and more users adopt rural mobile business services.