Assessing The Role of Digital India Initiatives in EmpoweringRural Women: An Analysis through The UTAUT Model

Background: To examine the impacts of the Digital India scheme on the economic empowerment of ‎rural women in India, the study has adopted Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of ‎Technology 2 (UTAUT2) and Empowerment Theory as a theoretical foundation. ‎ Methods: Conceptualizing the research process is based on a cross-sectional study; data were ‎collected from 570 women in rural India in three states (Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Tamil ‎Nadu) who had participated in state-funded digital literacy and capacity building initiatives. ‎‎“Structural equation modeling (SEM)” was conducted on the relationship between performance ‎expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, behavioral intention, and ‎actual usage of digital services using SmartPLS. ‎ Result: All proposed relationships were significant, confirmed, and found that the perceived ‎usefulness, ease of use, social encouragement, and infrastructures positively influence women's ‎behavioral intention to adopt digital platforms, which results in actual usage and economic ‎empowerment. The results encourage the use of UTAUT2 in a gendered rural context and extend ‎Empowerment Theory by making links between technology and behavior engagement and ‎concrete empowerment outcomes. The study is theoretically constructive as it integrates two ‎theoretical paradigms, technology adoption and empowerment, and practically constructive in ‎that the study offers recommendations to policymakers in the design of inclusive digital ‎strategies. It recommends surmounting digital infrastructure capabilities, growing vernacular ‎digital education, and facilitating community-based learning for sustainable empowerment. ‎ Conclusion: This research emphasizes that through evidence-based interventions and effective ‎community engagement in digital interventions would bring about a change in the social and ‎economic agency of rural women with the role of Digital India being an enabler to the process of ‎inclusive and technologically enabled rural development‎.