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

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 (R2= 0.39). Also as we predicted, technology use partially mediated the effect of social network constructs on economic outcomes (R2= 0.47). We discuss implications for theory and practice.