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The Rural-Urban ‘Digital Divide’ in New Zealand: Fact or Fable?

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Much electronic commerce literature addresses the potential existence of digital divides between different classes of users. While many studies document users reported perceptions of disadvantage or cite infrastructure availability benchmarks, few studies quantify the extent of such divides in actual uptake and usage of electronic communications tools. This study seeks to quantify the extent of perceived rural-urban digital divides among businesses in New Zealand. Yellow Pages business register data are analysed to determine business uptake of e-mail and websites by location. The results challenge conventional perceptions of disadvantage on the basis of geography alone. Indeed, some provincial areas demonstrate higher uptake of business e-mail than their urban counterparts. Smaller and more remote provincial centre businesses are more likely to be using e-mail than their counterparts closer to the metropolitan centres. Those centres most remote from New Zealand’s traditional commercial centre demonstrate higher uptake than those closer. Explanations based upon disadvantages such as poor telephony infrastructure appear inadequate in accounting for these observations. Rather, we contend that while infrastructure may play some part in the explanation for low rural hinterland uptake, the results of this study are consistent with economic determinations of the optimal time to invest in new technologies. Specifically, higher provincial and rural communication costs are a significant factor in encouraging higher and earlier levels of provincial and rural e-mail adoption, and the optimal time to invest in website adoption depends more upon firm size, local economic conditions and product than infrastructure quality and business location.

SKU: 0810-902810032424 Category: Tag:

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By Bronwyn Howell

Much electronic commerce literature addresses the potential existence of digital divides between different classes of users. While many studies document users reported perceptions of disadvantage or cite infrastructure availability benchmarks, few studies quantify the extent of such divides in actual uptake and usage of electronic communications tools. This study seeks to quantify the extent of perceived rural-urban digital divides among businesses in New Zealand. Yellow Pages business register data are analysed to determine business uptake of e-mail and websites by location. The results challenge conventional perceptions of disadvantage on the basis of geography alone. Indeed, some provincial areas demonstrate higher uptake of business e-mail than their urban counterparts. Smaller and more remote provincial centre businesses are more likely to be using e-mail than their counterparts closer to the metropolitan centres. Those centres most remote from New Zealand’s traditional commercial centre demonstrate higher uptake than those closer. Explanations based upon disadvantages such as poor telephony infrastructure appear inadequate in accounting for these observations. Rather, we contend that while infrastructure may play some part in the explanation for low rural hinterland uptake, the results of this study are consistent with economic determinations of the optimal time to invest in new technologies. Specifically, higher provincial and rural communication costs are a significant factor in encouraging higher and earlier levels of provincial and rural e-mail adoption, and the optimal time to invest in website adoption depends more upon firm size, local economic conditions and product than infrastructure quality and business location.

page: 231 – 251
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 19, Issue 3

SKU: 0810-902810032424

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