Scalable Information Systems for Agribusiness: Developing Farmers' Digital Capabilities for E-commerce Platform Adoption

INTRODUCTION: Digital transformation is considered as challenging yet imperative in Vietnam recently. In the agriculture sector, one of the directions to comprehensively promote digital transformation is to encourage and support farmers to promote their agribusiness on e-commerce platforms. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to exploratorily develop a framework for farmers' digital capabilities for e-commerce agribusines and empirically examine how the dimensions of such a developed framework impact farmers' adoption of ecommerce platforms for promoting their agriculture products. METHODS: A mixed method study design is employed, conducting a literature review of recognized databases and focus group technique to develop a framework for farmers' digital capabilities for e-commerce agribusiness. A field survey is designed to collect empirical data of farmers' perceptions on adopting e-commerce agribusiness and to quantitatively determine how dimensions of farmers' digital capabilities could impact their adoption of e-commerce platforms. EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) and multiple regression are used for data analysis. RESULTS: Study findings show that the four dimensions of farmers' digital capabilities for e-commerce agribusiness (Attitude toward e-commerce agribusiness, Basic ICT capabilities, E-commerce digital marketing capabilities, and Digital learning capabilities) positively contribute to their adoption of e-commerce platforms. CONCLUSION: This study proposes a framework for farmers' digital capabilities and verifies that the four dimensions of the framework could significantly enhance farmers' e-commerce platform adoption. We recommend several practical means to boost farmers' adoption. Future research could apply our proposed framework to examine the formation of farmers' ecommerce adoption in social platforms and offer solutions to enhanced agribusiness.