The swift evolution of mobile phone technology has benefited various groups within communities. Fishermen, as one of the important groups, particularly in terms of their role in ensuring the nation's food security, rely on mobile phones to conduct their fishing routines. While there is an abundance of studies that explore factors influencing mobile phone usage in various groups of communities, less interest has been placed on mobile phone usage among fishermen. This has driven the current study

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... to its focal objective, which is to determine the behavioral factors that influence the usage of mobile phones among fishermen. This study is quantitative, and surveys a total of 250 registered fishermen from Pangkor Island -one of the main fishing areas in Perak. The results demonstrate that most of the fishermen use mobile phones for safety and communication purposes. In addition, due to a number of problems, fishermen are found to use advanced mobile phone applications such as 3G, Internet and GPS at a minimal level. Further analysis confirms that four behavioral factors, namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, behavioral intention and social influence, have positive and significant correlations with mobile phone usage. To minimize the gap, the government has come out with a number of initiatives such as Rural Internet Centre, Community Broadband Centre and Medan Infodesa. Such initiatives have met its objective and albeit placing their investment on these ICT projects, additionally, the government is continually finding ways to encourage and embolden community to use ICT. One of the recognized ways to attract people in using ICT is by offering tools that are germane to their daily tasks and daily life. The mobile phone is related to the community and offers an abundance of benefits for them. In a general scope mobile phone usage provides chances for the community to create economic opportunities and strengthen social networks, and make the sharing of information and knowledge easier and more effectively (Jensen, 2007) . Within its specific scope, the mobile phone does benefit fishermen in a sense that they aid the fishermen to improve their access to information. In their early days, conducting fishing routine and business without such communication devices is challenging and comparatively with the assistance of mobile phone it 'connects' the fishermen with the valuable information with regard to market price, weather and fishing location (Jensen, 2007) . In addition, mobile phone helps the fishermen to feel secure while at the sea as it accelerates communication during emergency. Furthermore, mobile phone enhances fishermen communication quality as it allows them to be closer to their families and other fishermen even when they are on the sea (Salia et al., 2011) . Though mobile phones have been proven to play an important role in fishermen's daily routines, it seems that these two subjects -fishermen and mobile phones -are not a prime interest of scholars, as there has been a lack of relevant studies www.ccsenet.org/ass