Determinants of Vietnamese Farmers’ Intention to Adopt Ecommerce Platforms for Fresh Produce Retail: An Integrated TOE-TAM Framework

Abstract

The application of e-commerce platforms for retailing agricultural products has been increasingly adopted for several benefits namely market expansion and connection, brand establishment, price improvement as well as the motivation for farmers to actively ameliorate their farming practices, product quality and package. However, this retail method is still lagging far behind in Vietnam - despite the need for digitalization to solve persistent problems, namely the imbalanced supply, demand and accompanied price loss in the traditional distribution channel. Thus, this research aims to investigate the factors that impact the Vietnamese farmers’ intention to adopt e-commerce platforms for fresh produce retail. The paper applies the integrated Technology Acceptance Model and Technology-Organization-Environment framework. Through an online survey, a sample of 344 farmers who produced fruits and vegetables across Vietnam was drawn to confirm the hypotheses of this study. The results showed that there are positive relationships between three factors “Perceived usefulness” (PU), “Perceived Ease of use” (PEOU) and “Intention to Adopt” (INT). Among the variables, technological context (TC) is positively associated with both PU and PEOU, and organizational context (OC) impacts PU positively. Moreover, the environmental context (EC) is shown to positively influence the intention to adopt e-commerce platforms for fresh produce retail. Findings are valuable to the development of e-commerce platforms and policies to promote Vietnamese farmers’ intention of using e-commerce platforms to retail agricultural products.