Digital literacy of the aviation labour force in Eastern economic corridor

Abstract

The study was a mixed-method of both qualitative and quantitative research, aimed 1) to study the current condition of the aviation industry in Eastern Economic Corridor 2) to analyse the main factors that affect the digital literacy of the aviation labour forces and 3) to find the correlation of the main factors that affect the digital literacy of the aviation labour forces. The research was conducted into two parts. Part 1: Qualitative research was conducted by descriptive research methodology, which was conducted by using literature reviews and in-depth interviews of the aviation industry labour forces. Part 2: Quantitative research was conducted by a one-shot descriptive study to examine the correlation of the factors towards those of the aviation industry labour forces.

The results were found that U-Tapao Rayong-Pattaya International Airport is a strategic location. It is appropriated for the aviation industry of the region not only for the security but for the commercial events as well. The characteristics of the population revealed that the major group was male over 45 years old, married, got a bachelor degree, government operators in engineering departments, fair English skills, 15,000-25,000 baht per month, and over 5 years experiences in the aviation industry. The majority of the respondents spent their time for the digital media 4-6 hours a day for daily news. They used their smart phones during their operating for fulfilling their jobs through the Line application. The majority of the respondents were keen in using computers and accessing the sources through the applications, and could process the sources for presenting both on line and e-mails. The majority of the respondents believed that they would gain more digital literacy benefit, more effective operations, and development of units under the condition provided the digital software and hardware effectively. In term of digital literacy, the organisation did not provide widespread support to access to digital technology. Therefore, it was still complicated in accessing the Internet resulting in slow development. The knowledge about digital technology arising from age differences among the workers at the operation levels. The digital technology learning of individual was impacted on different levels. In addition, their language skills were at a moderate level. To understand the digital technology, they did not understand the change from traditional to digital systems, because the work performance effectiveness to miss the goals was set by the organization. To use the digital technology, such skills, it was not widely available in the aviation industry. This included problems in organisational internal communications resulting in misunderstandings between individuals in different levels of the management hierarchy, which impacted the use of digital technology to its full potential. The demographic factors that affected media use behaviours were ages, marital status, occupations, job departments, English skills, income and job experiences. The demographic factors that affected the performance and innovation effort expectations were education levels, occupations, job positions, and income. The demographic factors that affected the social influences were ages, education levels and job departments. The demographic factors that affected the facilities condition were ages and education levels. The demographic factors affected the digital literacy were gender, age, education levels, occupations, job positions, job departments, English skills, income, and job experiences. The digital media usage behaviours correlated with the purpose of using digital media in performance and innovation effort expectations, social influences and the facilities condition. The digital media usage behaviours correlated with the purpose of using digital media, the online media activities and the application used during work in the digital literacy. The digital media usage behaviours, performance and innovation effort expectations, social influences, and facilities condition correlated with digital literacy.