a more comprehensive of a specific phenomenon by comparing, combining and cross- checking the consistency of information drawn from different sources, times, places and people (Flick, Kardorff & Steinke, 2004; Patton, 1999). Conducting in-depth interviews of various rice stakeholders in Thailand in order to gain multiple perspectives about rice farmers’ e-commerce adoption for rice selling together with ensuring the finding with the study’s conceptual model which formulated based on the previous studies related to e-commerce adoption would allow the triangulation of data sources process within this research. Consequently, it contributed to the revision of the study’s conceptual model and the hypotheses, as well as developing the content for the questionnaire to ensure that the study adequately covered all the important constructs. After these processes, the questionnaire-based survey was conducted to confirm the findings from the qualitative approach, as well as expanding to a larger sample of targeted participants which would be accepted in terms of the transferability and generalizability of the qualitative method in this study.
The researcher believed that use of this mixed methodology would clearly contribute three beneficial aspects. Firstly, these different approaches can be appropriately integrated to generate distinctive and substantive advantages to the body of knowledge for different research purposes; thus, a combination would provide greater advantages than would be the case if only conducting one method.
For example, this research conducted in-depth interviews of rice stakeholders in Thailand to obtain and capture a variety of perspectives, as well as any important variables that could influence farmers’ e-commerce adoption for rice selling. The qualitative results could then enable the revision of the hypotheses and conceptual model for this research before conducting a pilot study and questionnaire-based survey, respectively. This mixed methodology could reassure that this research study’s focus was only on significant issues and that it would cover any relevant variables. Secondly, the benefit of using mixed methodology is to enable triangulation to be taken place in the study. The triangulation method in the social sciences refers to the comparison of findings from different research methods to ensure that aspects of the phenomenon have been accurately measured. Thirdly, qualitative and quantitative approaches may take different positions on the potential for bias to emerge in the research; therefore, mixed methodology could allow different viewpoints from each method to take care, based on
the likelihood of bias in the research. Therefore, to better understand the research design in this study, the mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative approaches is next explained.
According to Creswell (2007), the qualitative method is the interpretive and naturalistic approach generally used to develop an initial understanding of the social and human problem, as well as gaining fresh perspectives on any new behavior or phenomenon. The method is inductive and is generally used for hypotheses generation (Alqatawna et al., 2009). As the research on e-commerce adoption is mostly conducted in large enterprise and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sectors, it is much less often conducted in perishable goods and agricultural sectors, and is especially rare in e-commerce adoption for rice selling. This research then applied grounded theory method which refers to a process to generate or develop a theory that is grounded in the data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) by using a coding procedure to group the similarities and repetitive issues extracted from the interview finding into categories and themes as well as the constructs from related technological acceptance studies. Therefore, in the qualitative approach, in-depth interviews were used to explore and check the variables in the initial conceptual model which was developed from prior related studies. Such an instrument was needed to explore and confirm the significant factors that would influence the e-commerce adoption intention of rice farmers.
If variables were missing or had been used in error, they could be added or adjusted in the conceptual model. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and by telephone conversation with stakeholders in the Thai rice market, with stakeholders categorized into five groups. These groups comprised rice farmers, middlemen (rice mill owner and paddy rice hub owner), consumers, agricultural cooperative officers and rice industry- related government officers. In total, 15 participants were interviewed, using semi- structured interviews, developed from the literature review on e-commerce adoption.
To verify and validate the consistency of qualitative findings, the triangulation of data sources was applied by comparing and combining the interviews findings of different perspectives of rice stakeholders in Thailand in order to gain better understanding about rice farmers’ e-commerce adoption for rice selling as well as ensuring the finding with the study’s conceptual model which formulated based on the previous studies related to e-commerce adoption. The interview results then contributed to the development of
questionnaire as well as finalizing the research conceptual model and hypotheses for the quantitative analysis in the chapter 5.
On the other hand, the quantitative method is based on a positivist philosophy which typically deals with “statistical data, gathered by launching the questionnaire or survey to receive the result of public tendency” (Junaid, 2012, p. 88). This method is deductive in nature which is suitable for hypotheses and theory testing (Alqatawna et al., 2009). To proceed with the quantitative method, the significant variables that can influence the e-commerce adoption intention of rice farmers were firstly confirmed in the interviews; the structured questionnaire regarding e-commerce adoption was then organized; as was the revision of the conceptual model and the study’s hypotheses.
The developed questionnaire underwent pilot testing after its delivery to 30 rice farmers who had already adopted e-commerce for rice selling. The results acquired from the pilot testing subsequently contributed to confirm the questions in the questionnaire.
The survey was then conducted by distributing the revised questionnaire to targeted participants, namely, rice farmers who had already adopted e-commerce for rice selling.
The questionnaire was carefully classified into two parts, with the first part seeking general (personal) information, while the second part focused on the eight influencing factors related to e-commerce adoption: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, perceived e-commerce implementation cost, perceived risk, sufficient IT knowledge/skills, and government support. In each part, approximately three to eight questions were asked in multiple-choice formats and closed-ended questions. In terms of survey channels, the research questionnaire was circulated by hand as a hard-copy paper version to be filled in, and also via online channels, such as Facebook, email and the LINE application. Some participants sought the option of answering the questionnaire by telephone.