If You Build It, They Will Use: Usage Motivations and Unintended Effects of the Internet Village Motoman Project in Rural Cambodia

The adoption of community wireless has become a growing trend in both metropolitan and rural areas around the world. However, understanding the usage motivations and the unintended effects that those technologies have on communities is limited particularly for rural users. The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits and usage of an asynchronous wireless Internet system in a rural village of Cambodia. By employing qualitative methods of in-depth case analysis we revealed various usage motivations and unintended effects of the system. We derived five motivations of users to use the system; avowed identity, mean to an end, maintaining personal ties, power influence, and sychological commitment and ownership. Unintended effects of the system were the increase in interactions among actors and other forms of system usages including; Internet commerce, telemedicine, and e-government.