Main Article Content
Abstract
This article is a part of the first-author PhD-dissertation entitled ‘Factors Influencing ICT Adoption in East
Java Agribusiness: Individual and Organisational Approaches’. The main objective of presenting this article is
sharing information related to investigation of ICT adoption done by samples who are asked to respond to a
multiple response questions.
ICT adoption ladder model is used for the analysis. The samples are grouped into four level of adoption---
lowest to highest level), namely (i) ICT- Conventional, consists of fixed line phone, facsimile, and mobile phone,
(ii) ICT- Computer, consists of stand alone computer with access to the internet via internet cafes, (iii) ICTInternet,
consists of use of the internet for email and using a web browser, and (iv) ICT-E-business, consists of
using the internet for advertising, online business and virtual organisation activities.
About 178 sampled firms (farmers) in four regencies (Jember, Banyuwangi, Malang, Sidoarjo) were
interviewed in 2006. The respondents were given their opportunity to respond to multiple options on the purpose
for adopting ICT. Five options of ICT use were proposed: (i) ICT for communication among employees, (ii) ICT
for communication between companies and distributors, (iii) ICT for marketing and sales, (iv) ICT for searching
company’s resources, and (v) ICT for other purposes.
Results of the analysis show that all samples in group 1 (100%) adopted the lowest level of ICT. Group 2, 3,
and 4, respectively, adopted 75.3%; 44.9%; and 10.7%. This indicates the default automatic adoption level of
which all businesses operate at the minimum. The ladder shows that the higher the level, the smaller the
percentages of sampled firms. This means that as ICT technology becomes more sophisticated, fewer sampled
firms opt to adopt the higher levels on the ICT ladder. Also, firms at the higher levels still use ICT technology
from the lower levels. In other words, the existence of adopter advanced levels of ICT does not mean a reduction
of use at the lower levels. Some businesses maintain their existing ICT adoption levels and are not interested in
improvement by moving to the more sophisticated levels of ICT, due to considerations which will be investigated
in this research.
The results also show that general purposes of using ICT at the very basic level of the ladder needs to be
investigated in order to draw a picture of the benefit of adopting ICT.
Keywords: ICT adoption, agribusiness, Indonesia