Using technology to alleviate poverty: use and acceptance of telecenters in rural India

The preponderance of poor people worldwide live in rural areas. Since they cannot afford, and are not educated sufficiently to take full advantage of contemporary knowledge-based technologies, alternative approaches are necessary. A major business model to do so involves setting up a rural telecenter that provides computer and internet technology as a shared model or highly subsidized. Despite the potential and availability of telecenters, research suggests that telecenters have low usage. In this research, we explore the reasons for the low usage of telecenters using a framework for use and acceptance of rural telecenters. The framework we use builds on prominent IT theories and has the following four dimensions: (a) perceived outcomes, (b) perceived effort, (c) social influence, and (d) facilitating factors. We use this framework to formulate six research questions. The study in general has the goal to identify reasons for low use of telecenters and test it with an exploratory study of information and communication technology users and non-users from rural India. Implications are discussed at the village and provider levels.