Rural Residents’ Adoption Of The Internet

In recent years, the Internet has gradually penetrated into our life, which becomean important vehicle for the economy, culture, and personal activities. Compared withthe urban, rural informatization level is much lower. Focus of the rural informatizationdevelopment, not only would effectively narrow the digitalization gap between urbanand rural areas, eliminate transmission barriers between urban and rural area, resolvethe conflicts of dual structure, and also helps to build a new countryside and aharmonious society in our country. The diffusion of the Internet in developing area issignificant both from practical and theoretical perspective. Therefore, it is verynecessary to study the issue of rural residents’adoption of the Internet.As an innovation technology, the popularity of the Internet is actually an process ofan innovation diffusion and also a technology acceptance. Rogers’s diffusion ofinnovations theory and technology acceptance model provide a great theoreticalperspective for the study of Internet adoption. Many researches use the technologyacceptance model when study the diffusion of innovation technology, however,according to the characteristics of the rural residents,the current research adds lifesatisfaction and innovation spirit. In addition, the research adds perceived popularityinto the basis model of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as a antecedent.We hypothesize: innovation spirit, perceived popularity, perceived usefulness andperceived ease of use have direct impact on adoption of the Internet.In addition, LS, IS,PP, PM have direct impact on perceived usefulness. IS and PP have direct impact onperceived ease of use.The survey was into rural families living in the countryside of there counties inHubei, from August6,2012to August20.In accordance with the principle of randomsampling, the team randomly selected three areas, Da Ye, Han Chuan and ZhiJiang, and three towns, BaoAn, Cheng Huang and Gu Dian. The total number of data is498.Through making linear regression analysis and logistic regression analysis to testhypotheses, the study found that perceived popularity has direct positive impact onperceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and the adoption, while perceivedusefulness and innovation spirit has no significant effect on adoption. In addition, incontrast to the assumptions, life satisfaction has direct positive impact on perceivedusefulness.In other words, nowadays in the process of rural residents’ adoption of theInternet, more than the innovation technology advantages, the external factors influencemore on users’ adoption behavior. It is suggested that to promote the Internet in ruralareas, it should be noted to publicise the popularity of the Internet.