Prateep Verapattananiund distributed a soil test kit to the public, but the adoption rate was slow. This result can also be used as a guideline for the adoption plan of soil test set technology. KEYWORDS: Site Specific Nutrient Management (SSNM)/ Soil Classification/ Soil Test Kit/ Fertilizer Recommendation/ Technology Acceptance Model.
Currently, Eco-community Vigor Foundation is continuously promoting soil test kit in many areas. The researcher is therefore interested in the factors that influence the acceptance of soil test kit among farmers who grow rice.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Soil classification
In Thailand, there are more than 200 soil series, so the concept aims to simplify soil information for farmers. They do not understand the classification of soil series in detail, but they should know the name of soil series in their field. The researchers developed a simple soil identification manual by categorizing soil properties into 5 soil characteristics as follows:
Soil test kits
The advantage associated with a local laboratory is that they know the soil chemistry of the area where the sample was taken.
Decision-Aid
In this literature, user acceptance is often the decisive factors that determine the success or failure of an information system (Davis, 1989) towards the aim of this research is to understand the Thai farmer's behavior intention to use soil test kit. Doing so can identify features of soil test kit that can contribute to its ease of use and usefulness. This can therefore provide implications about ease of use and usability for developers, so on.
He argued that perceived usefulness and ease of use represent the beliefs that lead to such acceptance. Perceived ease of use (PEOU) is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be effortless. Perceived ease of use directly affected acceptance or intention to use and indirect effects on transmission behavior used in acceptance (Agarwal and Prasad 1999; Venkatesh and Davis 2000).
Behavioral intention to use (BI) is a measure of the likelihood that a person will use the application. Some have ignored intention to use or attitude, and instead studied the effect of usability or usability directly on use. Therefore, to preserve the brevity of the instrument and allow the investigation of the antecedents of ease of use and usability, the present research also studied the direct effect of ease of use and usability on use.
The importance of the antecedents for usability and ease of use was suggested which makes the technology usable and easy to use. In addition, perceived ease of use has been found to influence perceived benefits (Agarwal and Prasad 1999; Venkatesh and Davis 2000). Therefore, technology acceptance model (TAM) will be applied by measuring the user's intention, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use towards this technology.
METHODOLOGY
General information which was collected from the respondents
Factor affecting the decision to use soil test kit technology
For each external factor, the relationship between the characteristics developed to ensure the reliability of the research is shown and divided into 4 factors: education, trust in technology, social influences and technology compatibility. Training H1 Training experience will have a positive direct effect on the perceived usefulness of the soil test kit. H2 training experience will have a positive direct effect on perceived ease of use of the soil test kit.
Trust H3 Trust in technology will have a positive direct effect on perceived usefulness of soil test kits. H4 Trust in technology will have a positive direct effect on the perceived ease of use of soil test kits. Social influences H5 Social influences will have a positive direct effect on perceived usefulness in soil test sets.
H6 Social influences will have a positive direct effect on the perceived ease of use of the soil test kit. Compatibility The compatibility of the H7 technology will have a positive direct effect on the perceived usefulness of the soil test kit. The compatibility of the H8 technology will have a positive direct effect on the perceived ease of use of the soil test kit.
H9 Perceived ease of use will have a positive direct effect on attitude toward using soil test kits. H10 Perceived ease of use will have a positive direct effect on perceived usability of soil test kits. To encourage participation and mitigate non-response bias from farmers, researcher started with a letter describing the purpose of this study to the farmer before making questionnaire after participating in soil festival.
FINDING
- Perceived usefulness
- Perceived ease of use
- Attitude toward using
- Intention of using soil test kit
In order to have more confidence about respondent's background related to soil test kit experience, the preliminary data was done by screening only respondents who even knew soil test kit before. The accuracy assessment of the measurement model is the important step to ensure whether these constructs are valid that have high factor loadings on one construct and low loadings on all other constructs (Stevens, 1996) and are sufficient to reflect the underlying theoretical construct. Although the questions used in this research, TAM tool was first tested for its validity and reliability by based on previous the empirical study, the internal consistency reliability of the scales in each construct is measured by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.
Therefore, questionnaire reliability refers to the extent to which a measurement is free from random error and produces consistent results from the scale (Cooper and Schindler, 2000). Multiple Regression To indicate the strength of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables; and estimation of the regression coefficient values that represent the amount of variance in the dependent variable explained by the independent variables. In this study, Cronbach's alpha coefficient is in a range in which all alpha value results are large above 0.70. Satisfactory therefore means that the measurements are sufficiently reliable (Straub, 1989).
Construct validity means whether the selected items are real constructs that describe the event or just artifacts of the methodology itself (Straub, 1989). The result that the discriminant validity showed that the correlations between each method are equal to or lower than 0.7 (R ≤ 0.7), which means that there is high construct validity because correlations equal to 0.7 or less are acceptable (Ping , 2002). In addition to ensuring the validity of the data, a linear regression technique is used to measure the correlation between individual variables and independent variables using the method of entering any two-way interaction into the model.
The result shows that the combination of perceived ease of use, technology compatibility and training can predict 40.0 percent of the variance of perceived usefulness (adjusted R2=0.400) at a significant level (Sig. = 0.000). Meanwhile, the combination of technology compatibility, trust, and training can predict 33.4 percent of the variance in perceived ease of use (adjusted R2=0.334) at a significant level (Sig. = 0.000). Thus, perceived usefulness and attitudes towards use are influenced by the adoption of the technology, which is the purpose of continued use of the soil test kit.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conversely, the technology compatibility is a greater positive influence on perceived usability and ease of use that this factor has a high ability to influence in Thai farmer's perceptions and acceptance of use. The soil test kit was developed by Kasetsart University which is efficient, quick and easy as well as cheap. The farmers said that this soil test kit is easy to use (Attanandana, Yost and Verapattananirund, 2007).
To increase compliance, soil identification and decision aids should be simplified and adapted to the farmer's operating practice along with the soil test simplification kit for more effectiveness. In conclusion, this study provides useful guidelines for understanding the acceptance of information technology in soil testing kit in Thai farmer. Because of the soil testing step, the farmer must collect the soil and let it dry before it is analyzed.
Even though the soil test kit is designed for a simple testing procedure and there is also a color chart for easy interpretation. One farmer may hesitate to separately purchase a new set of soil test kits due to his sense of awareness. One set of soil test kits can test the sample 50 times during the planting season, just once a year.
Another is to create participatory or interactive learning, for example post-harvest brainstorming to plan the purchase of soil testing kits and fertilizers for the next cropping season. When combining the consumption of each person, soil sample kits were used at one time. Finally, in my view, technology would be adopted to match the behavior of the farmer, for example, how well to develop technology more compatibility, how to reduce the experiment of soil testing and also to expand the research study and service business for fruits and other agricultural products.
A Review of the Technology Acceptance Model: Origins, Evolution, and Future Directions, Indiana University, USA. Structural, Perceptual and Attitudinal Dimension Change in Information Technology Implementation Processes, International Journal of International Education Vol. 1, no. 3, 2000. The Technology Acceptance Model: Past, Present, and Future, Proceedings of the Information Systems Acceptance Association: Vol.
Interactions and squares in survey data: Testing latent acceptance variable models with survey data (2nd edition). Farmer Empowerment abstract from the International Acceptance Training Workshop on Applying Information Technology for Site-Specific Acceptance Agriculture on Small Farms in the Tropics.
APPENDICES
Appendix A Descriptive Statistics
Appendix B Reliability of Constructs and Correlations
Appendix C Coefficients between External factors and TAM factors
BIOGRAPHY
Questionnaire
- Education Secondary school High school Diploma
- Social status
- The location of Tailor*made fertilizer network or Soil clinic that you ve been participating with Same village Same province Other province
- Have you ever heard about soil test kit before?
- Have you ever join Tailor*made fertilizer network or Soil clinic before?
- Have you ever use soil test kit before?
- Perception and suggestion about soil test kit information Choose the number to evaluate each topic
- Soil test kit helps reduce the fertilizer cost
- Soil test kit helps inform me about soil nutriment of my land with the accurate result
- The process of collecting soul to analyze is simple and clear 7. The procedure of using soil test kit is simple and clear
- I think soil test kit is easier to use than waiting for the lab result Training perception
- I think the soil test kit usage workshop is important
- I can analyze and interpret the data better after the workshop 12. I ll be more confident to use the soil test kit if I attained the
- I believe I can analyze my own field Compatibility perception
- The timing of soil collecting and usage of soil test kit is appropriate with the planting time
- It s easy to buy the customized fertilizer after get the analytic 17. I can relate the result of soil test kit with the government
- I can use the customized fertilizer than before Attitude toward using perception
- I want to learn more about how to use the soil test kit
- I think the usage of soil test kit is benefit to an improvement of my produce amount
- Because my neighbor use the soil test kit and get a better result so I want to use it too
- I think this soil test kit is very useable
- If your soil test kit is ran out, will you buy it again?
- If your village didn t have/use the soil test kit yet, will you encourage your neighbor to use it?
The soil test kit helps me to inform about the soil nutrition of my land with an accurate result, an accurate result. I think the soil test kit is easier to use than waiting for the lab results. Perception training. Perception training. I will be more confident in using the soil test kit if I come to the workshop earlier.
The timing of soil collection and use of soil test kit is appropriate with the planting time which is appropriate with the planting time. I can use the customized fertilizer as before Attitude towards the use of perception Attitude towards the use of perception. I think the use of soil test kit is benefit for an improvement of my production quantity my production quantity.
21. I think the soil test kit is good if it is recommended by the person I respect. Since my neighbor uses the soil test kit and gets a better result, I want to use it too, so I want to use it too. If your village does not yet have/use the soil test kit, please encourage your neighbor to use it.
