A longitudinal study of co-diffusion between personal computers and global Internet diffusion: An approach to bridging the digital divide
This study examines the diffusive interaction between Personal Computers and the Internet to investigate if the introduction of other new technologies—such as smartphones and tablets—have changed the co-diffusion effect between these two technologies over time. The results of the study can be used in setting policies to close the digital divide. Several studies have been conducted in an effort to narrow the digital divide. The conceptual framework for most of the previous studies has been finding the main determinants of Internet penetration, and leveraging them across the world. This study, however, focuses on multi-innovations diffusion concept to observe if other technologies such as PCs have influenced Internet penetration. A longitudinal dataset including the number of Internet users and the number of the PCs has been obtained from International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the years 2006-2013. Then, the co-diffusion Bass model—extended Bass model—has been used to model the data for 13 developed and 13 developing countries. The result shows that the diffusive interaction between the Internet and the PC is not complementary as it used to be for the years 1991-2005 (Dewan and Ganley, 2010). In fact, the diffusive interaction between these two technologies has changed to be contingent, in which only one of the technologies has a positive significant effect on the other one—only the Internet has a positive significant effect on the PCs for the years 2005-2013. Based on the above argument, the policy implication of the result would be that increasing number of the PCs would not anymore accelerate Internet diffusion as it used to for the years 1991-2005 (Dewan and Ganley, 2010). Thus, it is needed to examine if accelerating access to the other Internet devices—such as smartphones and tablets—would increase the Internet diffusion in regions all over the world.
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