Conceptual Model for Agro-Based Entrepreneur’s ICT Engagement, Usage, and Economic Empowerment

The strategic importance of the agro-based business to the Malaysian economy has informed the drive towards expanding information and communication technologies (ICTs) access in the rural communities and cultivating ICTs in agriculture. The major thrust of this initiative is to bridge the digital divide by facilitating access to, adoption and usage of ICTs by about 40 percent of the country's population living in the rural communities. Although, the increasing accessibility to ICTs in Malaysia has attracted investigations on the level of its usage and barriers to its usage empirically, yet the implications of its usage on productivity have been less debated. In response, this study proposes to explicate how Malaysian agro-based business entrepreneurs' engagement in ICT usage could support the government's initiative on inclusiveness, i.e., economic empowerment of the underserved. Further to constraining usage to ability, we posit an encompassing determinant regarding individual's engagement, which is conceptualized from the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework. Furthermore, ICTs usage is hypothesized as the link from entrepreneur's engagement to economic empowerment, i.e., inclusiveness. The hypothesized model will be tested with data to be collected from the survey of agro-based business entrepreneurs living in rural and underserved communities across Malaysia.