Determinants of smallholders’ adoption of mobile phones for vegetable marketing in Vietnam
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-07-2021-0112 |
| Published date | 24 December 2021 |
| Date | 24 December 2021 |
| Pages | 506-522 |
| Author | Hung Gia Hoang,Duc Van Nguyen |
Determinants of smallholders’
adoption of mobile phones for
vegetable marketing in Vietnam
Hung Gia Hoang
The Faculty of Rural Development, University of Agriculture and Forestry,
Hue University, Hue City, Vietnam, and
Duc Van Nguyen
The Faculty of Agronomy, University of Agriculture and Forestry, Hue University,
Hue City, Vietnam
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine factors thatshape the adoption of mobile phones for
vegetablemarketing by Vietnamese smallholders.
Design/methodology/approach –A structured questionnairewas given to 185 smallholders randomly
chosen from 345 vegetable smallholders in the Vinh Thanh district of Vietnam. Descriptive statistics,
inferentialstatistics and a binary logistic regressionwere applied to analyse the data.
Findings –The research results show that the smallholders’adoption of mobile phones for vegetable
marketing is significantlyaffected by their number of extension contacts, distancefrom smallholders’homes
to local markets, community-based organisation participation, gender, training/credit programme
participation,age, education level, income and farm size (
x
2
= 143,111, p<0.000).
Practical implications –A combination of factorsrelated to socio-economic, situational and institutional
characteristics of smallholdersshould be considered when promoting smallholders’uptakeof mobile phones
for vegetablemarketing in developing nations.
Originality/value –This researchprovides useful insights into the determinants of mobile phone adoption
for vegetable marketing by smallholders and highlights areas that need to be considered when designing
policiesto improve the uptake of information and communicationtechnologies in developing countries.
Keywords Mobile phones, Factors, Vegetable marketing, Logistic regression, Vinh Thanh district,
Vietnam
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Agricultural production continues to play a significant role in economic growth and social
development in developing nations. Small-scale agricultural production dominates
agricultural sectors in the developing world. A majority of farms in the regions of the Asia-
Pacific and Africa are small-scale (Lowder et al., 2016;Ye and Pan, 2016;Mehta et al., 2010).
According to several researchers (Rapsomanikis, 2015;Otsuka et al., 2016;Fan and Rue, 2020),
The authors of this research would like to thank Hue University for its financial support in
conducting this research.
The authors of this study also acknowledge the partial support of University of Agriculture and
Forestry, Hue University under the Strategic Research Group Program, Grant No. NCM.
DHNL.2021.05.
Conflicts of interest: The authors of this research declare no conflict of interest.
GKMC
72,4/5
506
Received2 July 2021
Revised8 November 2021
Accepted30 November 2021
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.72 No. 4/5, 2023
pp. 506-522
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-07-2021-0112
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2514-9342.htm
income of the majority of farmers in the developing countries highly depends on small-scale
agricultural production activities. However, smallholder farmers in many developing nations,
including Vietnam, have been experiencing challenges in accessing marketing information,
knowledge and new technologies for maintaining and improving their income (Thanh and
Singh, 2006;Lan, 2013;Misaki et al., 2018). Hence, keeping smallholders in the developing
nations better notified about marketing information, and more accessed new agricultural
technologies and knowledge, is often considered an important method to maintainand
enhance smallholders’incomes. Recent statistics show that a high proportion of Vietnamese
live in rural regions and engage in agricultural activities (General Statistics Office of Vietnam,
2020). As such, agricultural production plays a crucial role in the growth and development of
Vietnam (Dao and Nguyen, 2013;Netherlands Worldwide, 2017). Fosteringthe developmentof
agriculture has, thus, beenthe key Vietnamese Government’s policy for income improvement
and poverty reduction. According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (2020),nearly
70% of the Vietnamese labour force work in the agricultural sector. The sector is dominated
by about 10 million smallholder farmers (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2020). Like fruit,
vegetablesare the significant means of livelihood and the main income source for many rural
Vietnamese small-scale farmers (Nguyen, 2018;Binh et al., 2014;Huong, 2014).
Vietnam remains an agriculture-based developing nation, and it is in transition from a
“centrally planned”to a more “market-led”system, which commenced after a “Doi Moi”
policy was initiated in the 1980s (Cervantes-Godoy and Dewbre,2010;Irvin, 1995;Kien and
Heo, 2008). To foster this transformation, the key agricultural development policy of the
Vietnamese Government has beentoassist small-scale farmers accessto markets (Tran and
Dinh, 2014;Ha et al., 2015). However, mostof the Vietnamese smallholders are experiencing
the problem of unavailability of up-to-dateinformation and distrust marketing information
(Pham, 2018;Lapar et al.,2006). According to several researchers (Alavion and Allahyari,
2012;Baourakis et al., 2002;Bachaspati, 2018;Magesa et al.,2020), information
communication and technologies (ICTs) can be significant methods of lessening marketing
problems for agricultural produce because they can help reduce unwanted transition costs
and finding the right clients for agricultural produce.ICTs refer to technologies that enable
individuals to receive, handle and transmit information in different forms (Ajani, 2014;
Kaware and Sain, 2015;Agwu and Uchechi, 2019). The common tools of ICTs include
computers, telephone, mobile phones,broadcast, TV, Facebook, radio and internet systems.
ICT tools provide farmers with opportunities to network with other farmers and traders,
acquire significant market information such as prices of agricultural outputs/inputs and
access up-to-date knowledge,skills and information.
According to some scholars (Alavion and Allahyari, 2012;Baourakis et al.,2002;
Bachaspati, 2018;Magesa et al.,2020), theuse of ICT tools for marketing of agricultural
produce significantly contributes to eliminating unnecessary intermediaries, helps to lessen
transaction costs between sellers and buyers and finding potential clients.To foster the use
of ICT tools for marketing of agricultural products,its advantages must be proven and the
ICT tools must be made available to potential users (Alavion et al.,2017). The Vietnamese
Government has highly promoted the use of ICT tools for fostering the country’s
development for many years (Konstadakopulos, 2005;Winley and Lau, 2012). For example,
the master plan for developing national telecommunication systemsuntil 2020 was
approved by the Government under the Decision No. 32/2012/QD-TTg of the Prime
Minister. The Governmenthas also provided many supports for Vietnamese to use ICT tools
for production and marketing. However, the level of uptake of ICT tools by farmers in
Vietnam for the marketingof agricultural products has been very low (VietNamNews, 2017).
Determinants
of
smallholders’
adoption
507
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