Determinants of Utility of Short Messaging Services (SMS) by Farmers of Tamil Nadu for Agricultural Technology Transfer

Short Messaging Services (SMS) through mobile phones have redrawn the contours of Agricultural Technology transfer. In order to enable the farmers to make full use of SMS as a tool for technology delivery, the extent of influence of myriad of factors is to be ascertained. Hence, a study was conducted with the aim of analysing the factors influencing the reception and utility of Short Messaging Services among 120 farmers as respondents in Virudhunagar district of Tamil Nadu. The results of the study revealed that among the factors, readability of messages, understandability of messages, size of the messages, font size of the messages and more information in one message were found to have ‘high influence’ to ‘moderate influence’ upon the respondents to receive and utilise SMS. There was moderate to high influence exerted by the factor ‘previous experience of receiving messages’ upon the respondents while the factor ‘successful experience of adopting the technologies given through the messages’ had less influence. The factor analysis resulted in the extraction of three factors which got loaded based on message and season, mobile and technical aspects of message and the influence of personality on the reception of messages.