Exploring the impact of ICT usage among indigenous people and their quality of life: operationalizing Sen’s capability approach

ABSTRACT

Numerous indigenous communities suffer from digital divide issues affecting their social, cultural, and economic well-being. As various technologies contribute both to creating opportunities and responding to social and cultural changes, it is imperative to explore the wider impacts of information and communication technologies (ICT) on improving living standards, individual knowledge, and awareness development in these groups of people. We conducted this study in Bangladesh and investigated the connection between ICT usage and Sen’s (1999) freedom factors with the objective of measuring quality of life. After an initial qualitative pilot study, a structured questionnaire was administered (n = 250). Data were analyzed using structural equation modelling. Results suggest that a strong relationship between ICT usage and Sen’s freedom factors exists in the development of indigenous people’s quality of life. Political freedom has a substantial effect on economic freedom for development. Moreover, economic freedom creates social opportunities as well as transparency.

KEYWORDS:

• ICT
• capability approach
• indigenous people
• least developing country

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to the editor in chief, handling editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments to enhance the quality of our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jhum cultivation, or shifting farming, is the native term of indigenous cultures for the slashing and burning of farming in hilly regions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number: 71810107003].

Notes on contributors

Najmul Hasan

Najmul Hasan is a PhD candidate at School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. His research interests are in information systems research, ICT4D, machine learning, predictive analytics, and medical informatics. He has published 22 journal papers, and 4 conference papers. He received Excellent Academic Award at HUST for 2019. He is regular reviewer of numerous renowned journals. During his career, he engaged in more than 70 academics, social and market research projects.

Yukun Bao

Yukun Bao is a Professor with the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, and the Deputy Director of Center for Modern Information Management at the same university. His research interests are in computational intelligence based predictive analytics, information systems and IT management. He has published more than 80 papers, and has been the principal investigator for four research projects funded by the National Science Foundation of China. He received the IBM’s Excellent Faculty Award in 2012. He is a senior member of IEEE and an Associate Editor of Neurocomputing and the Journal of Systems and Information Technology.

Shah J. Miah

Shah J Miah is the Head of the Business Analytics, Economics & Politics and Professor of Business Analytics at Newcastle Business School, The University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Since receiving his PhD degree from Griffith University in Business Decision Support Systems, his research interests have expanded in the subfields of Business Intelligence, Business and Big-Data Analytics. His outstanding work has appeared in top-tier outlets of the field, such as Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information and Management, Information Technology and People, and Knowledge-Based Systems.