Digital Periphery? A Community Case Study of Digitalization Efforts in Swiss Mountain Regions

Abstract

Rural economies have undergone major changes in recent years as traditional rural economic sectors declined and shifted. At the same time, digital technologies emerged and rural communities experience profound transformations. In this chapter, we analyze how technological change leads to changing rural economies in a Swiss mountain community. Although Switzerland has one of the highest national coverage of broadband in the world, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the transformation of its rural economy due to digitalization. The community case study’s 46 qualitative interviews show that digital connectivity in peripheral mountain communities is experienced differently by various actors. On the one hand, digitalization offers new economic opportunities to larger businesses, larger hotels, schools and health service providers. On the other hand, particularly smaller businesses struggle with the high cost of becoming digital and their owners tend to become more cautious and stressed as competition and price transparencies in the digital economy become intensified. In terms of spatial aspects, we argue that digitalization reduces cognitive distance between core and periphery while physical distance between the urban and the rural still exist.