Rural revitalization through e-commerce within community internet centre in Kampung Ubai, Kuantan

Abstract

One of the initiatives that were implemented and developed under the Malaysian Communication & Multimedia Malaysia (MCMC) Universal Services Provision (USP) fund was Community Internet Centre, or known as Pusat Ekonomi Keluarga Digital Malaysia (PEDi). The ultimate goal of PEDi is to provide internet access to the community to empower the community and increase the socioeconomic of the community through ICT adoption. PEDi undertook an extensive effort to assist rural communities in venturing into e-commerce. The feedback from grassroots PEDi Kampung Ubai, Kuantan, there is a lack of participation from their communities on e-commerce programmes. Although the majority of the population in Kampung Ubai are self-employed (small businesses and farmers) in the low-income area, only a few have adopted e-commerce. A minima number of communities attended e-commerce programmes at PEDi Kampung Ubai in 2020. This, due to communities being unclear about e-commerce potential benefits, thus the e-commerce programmes held by PEDi did not receive a good response from communities. Therefore, the purpose of this action research is to determine the issues that are facilitating and hindering its acceptance and understand the constraints that discourage the community to use ecommerce by using the UTAUT model. A mixed method approach, qualitative and quantitative was applied to this research to 26 respondents. The interventions through this study were carried out with the aims to increase the communities’ awareness of potential e-commerce benefits and improve the e-commerce adoption of communities. Thematic analysis and the Social Sciences Statistical Package (SPSS) were used to interpret and analyse the findings. The t-test analysis result shows that the intervention conducted is significant. This research will be useful for policy makers or relevant stakeholders as a guide to develop a strategic plan of e-commerce programmes for rural communities through PEDi.