Learning from the neighbors: The diffusion of state broadband policies in the United States

Ryan Yang Wang and Krishna Jayakar

Telecommunications Policy, 2024, vol. 48, issue 7

Abstract: This project examines how state broadband policies diffused among the states in the United States over the last 30-year period utilizing a network approach and the State Broadband Explorer dataset curated by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Broadband Access Initiate. The 621 valid state broadband policies in the U.S. (until January 2021) have been categorized into six main themes: broadband programs, competition and regulation, definitions, funding and financing, infrastructure access, and legislative intent. Our analytical strategy follows a two-step process: (1) to identify the latent network of broadband policy diffusion across the states using the NetInf algorithm; (2) to identify the nodal and dyadic variables that predict the observed diffusion flows. Our objective for the second step is to test out two competing hypotheses: the geographic learning model and the (co-)partisan learning model, which privilege geographic proximity and ideological affiliation respectively as the primary drivers of policy diffusion. The results show that geographic contiguity is the most significant factor predicting broadband policy diffusion. However, the results also identify the low salience of political factors in predicting broadband policy diffusion. Among nodal factors, only one namely divided government (of sender states) is a significant predictor of a diffusion tie. Among dyadic factors, there is one variable that supported political homophily as a significant predictor of diffusion flows (i.e., both states sharing the same type of legislative control). Partisanship appears to be much less of a driver of broadband policy in the U.S. context.

Keywords: Broadband policy; Policy diffusion; Network inference; Network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030859612400106X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:telpol:v:48:y:2024:i:7:s030859612400106x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2024.102809

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().