Overcoming the Digital Divide With ICT Diffusion: Multivariate and Spatial Analysis at China’s Provincial Level

Abstract

Several scholars have recently recommended a transition from focusing on Internet access (access divide) and Internet use (use divide) to the tangible outcomes of Internet use (outcome divide). This study evaluates the utility of this perspective in China for investigating digital inequalities across provinces. Despite having the world’s largest ICT market, digital disparities persist at the provincial, city, and county levels. This paper establishes an explanatory conceptual model of the digital divide (DD) at the provincial level and applies mapping through ArcGIS software to investigate spatial agglomeration. Spatial autocorrelation (Moran-i) is used to reveal high significance and multivariate analysis is used to investigate the key correlates. Among the provinces, a significant DD was found, which shows that provinces that are administratively sophisticated (such as Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandon, and Zhejiang) having a high digital development index score (IDI). Concomitantly, poverty-stricken regions and rural areas, mostly in southwest, central, and western China, have low IDI values. The factors found by this study to be most influential for improved ICT usage and outcomes are residential income (urban), e-government, literacy rate (secondary gross enrollment), and the working-age population. This indicates that socio-economic problems should be addressed first instead of institutional and innovational considerations. This study is the first to develop a conceptual model of the third-level digital divide (3-LDD) (ICT outcome) at the provincial level and utilize spatial analysis and mapping to supplement traditional methodologies.