Determinants of Cellphone Usage among Sea Fisher’s During Marine Fishing in Selected Coastal Villages of Bangladesh

Abstract

The cell phone can provide numerous benefits to sea fishers who risk their lives and resources for making livelihoods. This article is based on the firm assumption that the use of the cell phone during marine fishing can contribute to income, security and risk reduction. This study adds to the empirical evidence of determinants of cell phone use by fishers during marine fishing. For the purpose of reaching objectives, the study has drawn quantitative data generated through structured face-to-face interviews with 200 randomly selected fishers from three selected villages adjacent to the Bay of Bengal in the mid coastal area of Bangladesh during the period January to February 2016. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and binary logistic regression model is used to analyze the data. The study concludes that fishers own cell phone (odds ratio[OR]=6.56, 95 per cent confidence interval [CI]: 1.69,25.44), enjoying the availability of cell phone network (OR=166.20, 95 per cent CI:38.35, 720.28), earned low (OR=20.35, 95 per cent CI:4.24, 97.28) to medium income (OR=9.53, 95 per cent CI:0.99, 91.12) form sea fishing have a greater tendency to use cell phones, while fishers had low information need (OR=0.11, 95 per cent CI:0.01, 1.13) represented lower use of cell phone during marine fishing. Thus, it is essential to build cell phone infrastructure bases in the potential fishing zones of Bangladesh and supplying cell phone devices at subsidised cost.