Digital Divide Initiative Success in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal Field Study in a Village in India

Viswanath Venkatesh () and Tracy Ann Sykes ()
Additional contact information
Viswanath Venkatesh: Department of Information Systems, Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
Tracy Ann Sykes: Department of Information Systems, Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701

Information Systems Research, 2013, vol. 24, issue 2, 239-260

Abstract: Digital divide initiatives in developing countries are an important avenue for the socioeconomic advancement of those countries. Yet little research has focused on understanding the success of such initiatives. We develop a model of technology use and economic outcomes of digital divide initiatives in developing countries. We use social networks as the guiding theoretical lens because it is well suited to this context, given the low literacy, high poverty, high collectivism, and an oral tradition of information dissemination in developing countries. We test our model with longitudinal data gathered from 210 families in a rural village in India in the context of a digital divide initiative. As theorized, we found that the social network constructs contributed significantly to the explanation of technology use ( R 2 = 0.39). Also as we predicted, technology use partially mediated the effect of social network constructs on economic outcomes ( R 2 = 0.47). We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Keywords: Internet kiosk; system use; economic benefits; digital divide; technology adoption; technology diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.1110.0409 (application/pdf)

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:inm:orisre:v:24:y:2013:i:2:p:239-260

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Information Systems Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().