Complementarities in the Diffusion of Personal Computers and the Internet: Implications for the Global Digital Divide.

Author List: Dewan, Sanjeev; Ganley, Dale; Kraemer, Kenneth L.;

Information Systems Research, 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 925-940.

This paper studies the cross-country diffusion of personal computers (PCs) and the Internet, and examines how the diffusive interactions across these technologies affect the evolution of the global digital divide. We adopt a generalized diffusion model that incorporates the impact of one technology's installed base on the diffusion of the other technology. We estimate the model on data from 26 developing and developed countries between 1991 and 2005. We find that the codiffusion effects between PCs and the Internet are complementary in nature and the impact of PCs on Internet diffusion is substantially stronger in developing countries as compared to developed ones. Furthermore, our results suggest that these codiffusive effects are a significant driver of the narrowing of the digital divide. We also examine the policy implications of our results, especially with respect to how complementarities in the diffusion of PC and Internet technologies might be harnessed to further accelerate the narrowing of the global digital divide.

Keywords: codiffusion; diffusion model; digital divide; global IT; IT diffusion; IT penetration

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List of Topics

#164	0.256	countries global developing technology international country developed national economic policy domestic study foreign globalization world government nations innovative technological especially
#49	0.189	adoption diffusion technology adopters innovation adopt process information potential innovations influence new characteristics early adopting set compatibility time initial current
#178	0.155	digital divide use access artifacts internet inequality libraries shift library increasingly everyday societies understand world initiative initiatives embedded community dimensions
#108	0.133	model research data results study using theoretical influence findings theory support implications test collected tested based empirical empirically context paper
#173	0.130	effect impact affect results positive effects direct findings influence important positively model data suggest test factors negative affects significant relationship
#83	0.083	personal computers use lead order using users pcs innovativeness understanding professional help forces gained usage increase trends parallel introduced expressed