PSYCHOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DRIVERS OF RURAL ACTORS’ BEHAVIOURS: EXPERT INSIGHTS FOR RURAL TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

Unexpectedly, psychological and technological behavioural dimensions exhibit statistically significant inverse relationships with progress in rural transformation, despite the widespread assumption that rural actors’ behaviours are critical drivers of development. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions that enhanced behavioural capacities consistently lead to positive transformation outcomes in rural contexts. Guided by the Transformational Rural Actors’ Behavioural (TRAB) conceptual framework, developed by Samsudin et al. (2024), which conceptualises rural transformation as a function of behavioural, psychological and technological capabilities embedded within socio-cultural and structural contexts, and drawing on insights from Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB), the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB), and the Citizen-Centric Smart Cities (CCSC) framework, this study examines the qualitative explanatory phase of a larger mixed-methods approach to unpack these counterintuitive findings identified through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) structural modelling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with elite informants, each with extensive rural development experience (minimum 5 years, most over 10 years), purposively selected to provide in-depth explanatory insights into the quantitative findings. The findings reveal that psychological attributes, particularly coping strategies, decision-making processes, and mental health well-being, emerge as the most salient manifestations of the observed adverse effects in rural transformation. Specifically, expert insights indicate that these weaknesses arise from broader contextual mechanisms, including knowledge and awareness gaps, dependency-oriented mindsets, generational disparities, and culturally embedded lifestyle practices. Within the technological dimension, low digital literacy, limited e-commerce adoption, weak Information and Communication Technology (ICT) utilisation, and low mobile banking uptake emerge as key technological constraints. Moreover, these technological constraints are amplified by infrastructural deficits, affordability barriers, and uneven digital exposure, restricting the effective translation of technological access into transformative outcomes. Experts further emphasised that psychological readiness and technological capability are interconnected; misalignment between the two reduces the effectiveness of rural development initiatives. The findings suggest conditional and context-dependent behavioural effects rather than uniformly positive influences. The study advances rural transformation theory by demonstrating that behavioural drivers may become counterproductive when psychological readiness and technological capability are misaligned within structurally constrained environments.