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Analog citizens

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Abstract

Close to one-fifth of adults living in advanced societies do not use the Internet. Unfortunately, they are also those who might be more likely to benefit from the support of social services. Understanding who are these analog citizens is therefore a crucial task for any government. In this paper we develop a statistical model to capture the demographic profile of Internet usage. We formally consider spatial auto-correlation in order to properly measure the relative impact of age, education, income, gender and geography on the probability of Internet usage. Based on close to 30,000 observations we observe that age is by far the most important demographic determinant of Internet usage. Geography exhibits a significant impact, both complex and completely overshadowed by the age/education/income triad. We then examine three groups in more detail: seniors, dropouts/homeless living in cities, and members of First Nations living in remote communities.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been made possible in part by a grant from APSI (Québec). We would like to thank CEFRIO and SOM for graciously making precious data available to our scrutiny. We would also wish to thank Mrs Thérèse Grenier, head of the LaSarre’s Community Futures Development Corporation for her invaluable assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Laval, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Stéphane Gauvin & Kevin Granger

  2. CEFRIO, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Marianne Lorthiois

Authors
  1. Stéphane Gauvin
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  2. Kevin Granger
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  3. Marianne Lorthiois
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Correspondence to Stéphane Gauvin.

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Gauvin, S., Granger, K. & Lorthiois, M. Analog citizens. Electron Commer Res 15, 365–386 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-015-9185-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-015-9185-4

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