Broadband Internet and social capital

Andrea Geraci, Mattia Nardotto, Tommaso Reggiani () and Fabio Sabatini

Journal of Public Economics, 2022, vol. 206, issue C

Abstract: We study the impact of broadband penetration on social capital in the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits a technological feature of the telecommunication infrastructure that generated substantial variation in the quality of Internet access across households. The speed of a domestic connection rapidly decays with the distance of a user’s line from the network’s node serving the area. Merging information on the topology of the network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital from 1997 to 2017, we show that access to fast Internet caused a significant decline in civic and political engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration crowded out several dimensions of social capital.

Keywords: ICT; Broadband infrastructure; Networks; Internet; Social capital; Civic capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 L82 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272721002140
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Broadband Internet and Social Capital (2023)
Working Paper: Broadband Internet and Social Capital (2021)
Working Paper: Broadband Internet and Social Capital (2021)
Working Paper: Broadband Internet and Social Capital (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:206:y:2022:i:c:s0047272721002140

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104578

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().