Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
vestment Act of 2009 provided $2.5 billion to the
USDA for loans and grants to increase broadband
provision in rural areas. As much as these funds
address the needs of unserved and underserved
communities, rural broadband availability will
increase.
In this chapter we tackle some aspects that
differentiate urban and rural household use of
the Internet, such as the question of what on-
line behavior becomes more likely as improved
access technology becomes available? And, are
the differences in rural and urban household use
significant?
ership and the narrowest for broadband Internet
connections. Most studies on Internet adoption
have focused on the household. Studies by the
NTIA in the 1990s, for example, described differ-
ences across many demographic and geographic
groupings, not only for households, but also for
Internet activity in the workplace.
Rural communities have not been left out of
the evolving digital economy, though from the
onset there has been an issue of equal access to
the Internet (Parker and Hudson, 1992; Oden and
Strover, 2002). Rural households have become
almost as likely as urban households to use the
Internet (Stenberg, 2006). Broadband Internet ac-
cess in rural areas, however, has been less prevalent
than in much more densely populated areas of the
country. Broadband Internet access has become
the crux of today's policy debate on equal access
between urban and rural communities (Malecki;
Stenberg et al, 2009).
BACKGROUND
Broadband Internet access has become viewed
by many as necessary to fully utilize the potential
from the Internet (Greenstein and Prince, 2006;
Leamer and Storper; Parker, 2001). As the Internet
economy has evolved, more and more applications
have required higher data transmission rates for
their use, even in the case of simple shopping
web-sites.
Studies by the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration and Economic
and Statistics Administration (NTIA) that first
appeared in 1994, have described the changing
user demographics of Internet use. More recent
studies describe the current, and more static, situa-
tion or examine the adoption of newer, broadband,
technologies. Household studies by Choudrie and
Dwivedi (2005, 2006); Stanton (2004); Stenberg
and Morehart (2008); and the U.S. General Ac-
counting Office (2001) tested socio-economic
factors distinguishing adopters and non-adopters
of broadband Internet use. Choudrie and Dwivedi
(2005) found age, gender, and social grade were
important when distinguishing between adopters
and non-adopters. Their 2006 study found that
characteristics such as income and education were
just as important. Stanton (2004) tested for a digital
divide and found it the widest for computer own-
ON-LINE CONSUMER ACTIVITIES
The household, or consumption, sector is a ma-
jor, perhaps the greatest, demand-side driver in
the development of the Internet economy. There
are two major data sources directly addressing
individual household on-line activity: the Bureau
of the Census and PEW (PEW Internet & Ameri-
can Life Project). Unfortunately, the Bureau of
Census has not collected data on household on-
line activity since 2003 (outside the limited “are
households on-line” questions more recently) so
we must rely on the small sample PEW surveys
for any understanding of individual household's
on-line behavior instead of the aggregate e-retail,
peer-to-peer, web-page access counts, and other
useful information that are commonly reported.
PEW survey samples, because of their small
sample size do not allow much analysis between
urban and rural household in their on-line behavior.
What can be ascertained from the data suggests
that on-line behavior is alike if one controls for
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