Behavioral Intention to Adopt Precision Agriculture – A Study of Vietnamese Smallholder Rice Farmers

<p dir="ltr">Global agriculture is under the pressure of efficiency and sustainability. The overuse of fertilizers, chemicals, and water has led to issues associated with environmental safety and waste. Vietnam shares similar agricultural challenges with other countries. The inefficiency in input usage and low profitability in farming pose an urgent need to innovate current practices. Precision agriculture (PA) emerges as a potential solution, offering a system approach to make agricultural activities more efficient and sustainable with optimal input. While PA technology is prevalent in developed economies, its concept remains novel to Vietnamese smallholder rice farmers. This prompted an investigation into the factors influencing these farmers' intentions (BI) to adopt PA technology. Therefore, four research objectives have been listed to be addressed in this research: (1) to explore different views of various stakeholders on the potential for and necessity of PA adoption among smallholder rice farmers; (2) to identify potential factors that affect the behavioral intention of smallholder rice farmers in Vietnam towards adopting PA technology; (3) to investigate how the performance of cooperatives and other key factors influence the intention of smallholder rice farmers in Vietnam to adopt PA technology; (4) to systematically identify and analyze the various combinations of causal conditions that influence the behavioral intention of smallholder rice farmers in Vietnam to adopt PA technology. </p><p dir="ltr">In order to accomplish the objectives, this research was conducted in two distinct phases. The initial phase involved semi-structured interviews aimed at collecting feedback from farmers and experts to primarily validate and extend the proposed research model. The subsequent phase focused on quantitative data collection from a sample of 600 smallholder farm owners to test 18 hypotheses examining various factors that directly and indirectly affect BI to adopt PA. The quantitative data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) complemented by Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to examine the effects of individual factors and combinations of factors on the intention of farmers to adopt PA technology. </p><p dir="ltr">This qualitative phase discussed performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), government support (GS), social influences (SI), internal facilitating conditions (FC), and the performance of agricultural cooperatives (COOP) as outstanding themes guided by the extended UTAUT model. The technology’s observability (OBSV) and trialability (TRIA) were found to potentially affect farmers’ performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Additionally, as grounded from the interviews, the support from lead firms is a newly emerging themes that play a crucial role in facilitating the adoption of PA technology among Vietnamese smallholder rice farmers. This new theme was added to the proposed research model to be tested in the quantitative phase. </p><p dir="ltr">The quantitative analysis through SEM showed that factors like PE, EE, SI, GS, and LEAD significantly influenced farmers' intention to embrace PA technology. On the contrary, internal FC did not show a significant effect on BI. Importantly, the role of agricultural cooperatives as innovation intermediaries was found to significantly moderate the impact of GS and LEAD on BI. Additionally, multi-group analysis (MGA) highlighted that a farmer's age plays a crucial role in moderating the effect of SI on BI, with older farmers showing a stronger positive response. </p><p dir="ltr">Moreover, the application of fsQCA aimed to enrich the SEM findings, identifying five distinct condition combinations that reliably lead to BI. These combinations include PE, EE, SI, GS, and LEAD; PE, EE, SI, LEAD, and COOP; PE, SI, GS, LEAD, and COOP; PE, EE, SI, GS, COOP, with a negation of FC; and PE, EE, GS, LEAD, COOP, with the absence of FC. This diversity in pathways illustrates equifinality, indicating that various combinations of factors can result in the same end goal: a strong intention to adopt PA technology. The persistence of this intention to adopt, despite less favorable internal circumstances, highlights the importance of external support mechanisms (from lead firms, the government, and cooperatives). </p><p dir="ltr">NCA aligns with the fsQCA results, emphasizing that PE is an indispensable factor for a strong farmers’ intention to adopt. This necessity of PE is echoed across all identified configurations, highlighting its critical role in achieving the desired outcome. This alignment between NCA and fsQCA underscores the validity and strength of the configurational approaches used.The findings from this research not only enhance the understanding of PA and its potential adoption in Vietnam but also provide insights that can guide policy adjustments and the creation of initiatives to promote PA adoption among Vietnamese farmers. A notable aspect of this research is its innovative approach to extending the renowned Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. It underscores the importance of external support from lead firms and the government, while also emphasizing the moderating role of a cooperative's performance. This contribution offers a fresh perspective on the factors influencing technology adoption in agriculture. Furthermore, the application of NCA and fsQCA in this research provides a more nuanced conceptualization of PA adoption, which has been ignored by prior research in the field. By the time of the thesis submission, the researcher successfully published two journal articles based on the thesis content. The first article, a systematic literature review, was drawn from Chapter 2, while the second, focusing on qualitative findings, emerged from Chapter 4. Additionally, a third article is currently under review; this paper employs a combination of SEM and fsQCA methodologies, as detailed in Chapter 5 of the thesis.</p>