Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

This paper reviews roughly 200 recent studies of mobile (cellular) phone use in the developing world, and identifies major concentrations of research. It categorizes studies along two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes studies of the determinants of mobile adoption from those that assess the impacts of mobile use, and from those focused on the interrelationships between mobile technologies and users. A secondary dimension identifies a subset of studies with a strong economic development perspective. The discussion considers the implications of the resulting review and typology for future research.

Keywords:

• cellular telephone
• developing countries
• mobile telephone
• telecommunications

An earlier version of the paper was presented at the International Conference on Mobile Communication and Asian Modernities, City University of Hong Kong, 7–8 June 2005. The author thanks the Earth Institute at Columbia University for support during the writing of the early draft of paper, and to numerous readers—particularly the three anonymous reviewers—for their suggestions. Opinions and analysis are the author's, and not necessarily those of Microsoft Corporation.

Notes

∗South Africa studies are included in the review despite upper-middle-income classification.

∗∗World totals N = 208, excludes some small geographies not appearing in the World Bank Classifications or in the ITU statistics.

As of October 2007, at http://members.aol.com/leshaddon/MobileRefs.html and http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/∼nalinik/mobile.html.

As of October 2007, http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/ci/cmcs/events lists many of these conferences.