research-article

Power to the peers: authority of source effects for a voice-based agricultural information service in rural India

Authors:

Krishna Savani,

Scott R. Klemmer,

Tapan S. ParikhAuthors Info & Claims

ICTD '12: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

Pages 169 - 178

https://doi.org/10.1145/2160673.2160696

Published: 12 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Online communities enable people to easily connect and share knowledge across geographies. Mobile phones can enable billions of new users in emerging countries to participate in these online communities. In India, where social hierarchy is important, users may over-value institutionally-recognized authorities relative to peer-sourced content. We tested this hypothesis through a controlled experiment of source authority effects on a voice-based agricultural information service for farmers in Gujarat, India. 305 farmers were sent seven agricultural tips via automated phone calls over a two-week period. The same seven tips were each voice-recorded by two university scientists and two peer farmers. Participants received a preview of the tip from a randomly assigned source via the automated call, and played the remainder of the tip by calling a dedicated phone number. Participants called the follow-up number significantly more often when the tip preview was recorded by a peer than a scientist. On the other hand, in interviews conducted both before and after the experiment, a majority of farmers maintained that they preferred receiving information from scientists. This stated preference may have been expressing the more socially acceptable response. We interpret our experimental results as a demonstration of the demand for peer-based agricultural information dissemination. We conclude with design implications for peer-to-peer information services for rural communities in India.

References

[1]

Amazon Mechanical Turk. Retrieved July 7, 2009 from http://www.mturk.com.

[2]

A. Appadurai. Putting hierarchy in its place. Cultural Anthropology, 1988.

[3]

R. Birner and J. R. Anderson. How to make agricultural extension demand-driven? Technical report, International Food Policy Research Insititute, November 2007.

[4]

S. Chaiken and D. Maheswaran. Heuristic processing can bias systematic processing: Effects of source credibility, argument ambiguity, and task importance on attitude judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(3):460--473, 1994.

[5]

R. B. Cialdini, R. R. Reno, and C. A. Kallgren. A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1990.

[6]

L. Dumont and M. Sainsbury. Homo hierarchicus. University of Chicago Press, 1970.

[7]

R. J. Fisher. Social desirability bias and the validity of indirect questioning. Journal of Consumer Research, 1993.

[8]

R. Gandhi, R. Veeraraghavan, K. Toyama, and V. Ramprasad. Digital green: Participatory video and mediated instruction for agricultural extension. Information Technologies & International Development, 5(1), 2009.

[9]

Honey Bee Network. Retrieved July 22, 2011 from http://www.honeybee.org.

[10]

S. Kitayama, S. Duffy, T. Kawamura, and J. Larsen. Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: A cultural look at a new look. Psychological Science, 2003.

[11]

R. Levine, S. Sato, T. Hashimoto, and J. Verma. Love and marriage in eleven cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1995.

[12]

W. Maddux and M. Yuki. The "ripple effect": Cultural differences in perceptions of the consequences of events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2006.

[13]

L. Mamykina, B. Manoim, M. Mittal, G. Hripcsak, and B. Hartmann. Design lessons from the fastest q&a site in the west. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, CHI '11, pages 2857--2866, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM.

Digital Library

[14]

M. Mines. Conceptualizing the person: Hierarchical society and individual autonomy in india. American Anthropologist, 1988.

[15]

V. Parmar, D. Keyson, and C. de Bont. Persuasive technology to shape social beliefs: A case of persuasive health information systems for rural women in india. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 24, 2009.

[16]

N. Patel, D. Chittamuru, A. Jain, P. Dave, and T. S. Parikh. Avaaj otalo: a field study of an interactive voice forum for small farmers in rural india. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 733--742, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.

Digital Library

[17]

D. L. Paulhus. Measurement and control of response bias. measures of personality and social psychological attitudes. Measures of social psychological attitudes, 1991.

[18]

R. E. Petty and J. T. Cacioppo. The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19(3):123--205, 1986.

[19]

D. Ramachandran, J. Canny, P. D. Das, and E. Cutrell. Mobile-izing health workers in rural india. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 1889--1898, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.

Digital Library

[20]

S. W. Raudenbush and A. S. Bryk. Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Sage Publications, 2002.

[21]

K. Savani, M. W. Morris, and N. Naidu. Deference in indiansâĂ&Zacute; decision making: Introjected goals or injunctive norms? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011.

[22]

J. B. P. Sinha, T. N. Sinha, J. Verma, and R. B. N. Sinha. Collectivism coexisting with individualism: an indian scenario. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2001.

[23]

S. R. Sterling and N. Rangaswamy. Constructing informed consent in ict4d research. In Proc. IEEE/ACM Int'l Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 2010.

Digital Library

[24]

C. Storti. Speaking of India: Bridging the communication gap when working with Indians. Intercultural Press, 2007.

[25]

R. Sulaiman V. Innovations in agricultural extension in india. Technical report, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003.

[26]

J. Verma and H. Triandis. The measurement of collectivism in india. merging past, present, and future in cross-cultural psychology. Selected papers from the Fourteenth International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1999.

[27]

P. H. White and S. G. Harkins. Race of source effects in the elaboration likelihood model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(5):790--807, 1994.

Cited By

Cele ZTshikovhi NNetswera F(2024)How SDG2 Zero Hunger Is Achievable Through Agropreneurship—the Case of Rural South Africa Community Training ProgramsInnovation and Development of Agricultural Systems10.1007/978-981-97-2926-5_18(391-412)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2926-5_18
Doggett OBronson KSoden R(2023)HCI Research on Agriculture: Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Definitions, and OpportunitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581081(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581081
Poon AGuerrero LLoughman JLuebke MLee ASterling MDell N(2023)Designing for Peer-Led Critical Pedagogies in Computer-Mediated Support Groups for Home Care WorkersProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580881(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580881
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Power to the peers: authority of source effects for a voice-based agricultural information service in rural India
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
    1. Sound-based input / output
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods
    2. Interaction devices
      1. Sound-based input / output

Recommendations

Using radio and interactive ICTs to improve food security among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Radio is the most widely used medium for disseminating information to rural audiences across Africa. Even in very poor communities, radio penetration is vast; it is estimated there are over 800 million radios in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper summarizes ...
e-governance in rural India
ICEGOV '08: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance

E-governance initiatives in India have been crucial developmental activities undertaken in the recent years. Karnataka state in India has been foremost in implementing many of such e-governance related developmental projects. The paper in progress is an ...
Voice-based marketing for agricultural products: a case study in rural Northern Ghana
ICTD '13: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development: Notes - Volume 2

We present a study conducted in rural Northern Ghana about issues around the marketing of agricultural products and the need of mobile-based ICT solutions. The need for the spread of information and web access to communities in developing countries has ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

ICTD '12: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

March 2012

374 pages

ISBN:9781450310451

DOI:10.1145/2160673

General Chairs:
Michael L. Best
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Ellen Zegura
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Jonathan Donner
Microsoft Research
,
Beki Grinter
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Gary Marsden
University of Cape Town

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

UNESCO
Microsoft: Microsoft
IDRC: International Development Research Centre
Royal Holloway, University of London: Royal Holloway, University of London

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 March 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Division of Information and Intelligent Systems

Conference

ICTD '12

Sponsor:

Microsoft
IDRC
Royal Holloway, University of London

ICTD '12: Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

March 12 - 15, 2012

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 22 of 116 submissions, 19%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

40
Total Citations
View Citations
364
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)16
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 21 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Cele ZTshikovhi NNetswera F(2024)How SDG2 Zero Hunger Is Achievable Through Agropreneurship—the Case of Rural South Africa Community Training ProgramsInnovation and Development of Agricultural Systems10.1007/978-981-97-2926-5_18(391-412)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2926-5_18
Doggett OBronson KSoden R(2023)HCI Research on Agriculture: Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Definitions, and OpportunitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581081(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581081
Poon AGuerrero LLoughman JLuebke MLee ASterling MDell N(2023)Designing for Peer-Led Critical Pedagogies in Computer-Mediated Support Groups for Home Care WorkersProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580881(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580881
Prabhu SSubramanyam N(2023)Analysis of India’s agricultural ecosystem using knowledge-based Tantra frameworkCSI Transactions on ICT10.1007/s40012-023-00384-z11:2-3(129-155)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40012-023-00384-z
Aker JCariolle JAker JCariolle J(2023)Rethinking ICT4DMobile Phones and Development in Africa10.1007/978-3-031-41885-3_6(155-170)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41885-3_6
Raza ANaseem MHayat Qasmi NRandhawa SMalik FTaimur BSt-Onge Ahmad SHirshleifer SRezaee AVashistha A(2022)Fostering Engagement of Underserved Communities with Credible Health Information on Social MediaProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202210.1145/3485447.3512267(3718-3727)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485447.3512267
Vashistha ARaza A(2022)Voice Interfaces for Underserved CommunitiesIntroduction to Development Engineering10.1007/978-3-030-86065-3_22(589-611)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86065-3_22
Chengalur-Smith IPotnis DMishra G(2021)Developing voice-based information sharing services to bridge the information divide in marginalized communities: A study of farmers using IBM’s spoken web in rural IndiaInternational Journal of Information Management10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.10228357(102283)Online publication date: Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102283
Luo YMin SBai J(2021)The role of rubber farming in household dietary diversity in the upper Mekong region, Southwest ChinaFood and Energy Security10.1002/fes3.28510:3Online publication date: 4-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1002/fes3.285
Poon A(2020)Practitioners and ICTDProceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3378393.3402271(160-173)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3378393.3402271
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents