Social Influence in Mobile Phone Adoption: Evidence from the Bottom of the Pyramid in Emerging Asia

This article attempts to quantitatively measure the various inouences on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand. Based on an existing theoretical framework, adoption is modeled by atting a logit model to a large sixcountry dataset. The study ands evidence for the importance of social inouence in mobile adoption in two modes: one that exerts pressure on individuals to adopt, and another that helps to generate beneats via social networks that are tied in with economic and business networks. The article elaborates on the resulting social policy implications for using mobile telephone services to aght poverty at the BoP in these and similar countries.