The Digital Divide in Rural South Asia: Survey Evidence from Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Vol 23, No 1; Article by Yan Zhou, Nirvikar Singh and P D Kaushik; March 2011

The concept of a 'global digital divide' - unequal access to digital information and communication technologies - is well established. The main policy implications from cross-country studies are relatively blunt: get richer, have more telephones, and regulate telecommunications better. In this paper, we examine an alternative approach to bridging the digital divide, through organisational innovations that provide low cost Internet access in developing countries, within the existing conditions of income levels, telecommunications infrastructure and regulatory environment. We use survey data from 500 individuals in three South Asian countries, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, to examine factors influencing patterns of computer and Internet use. We estimate logit and multinomial logit models, using explanatory variables such as income, household size, education, and occupation, as well as infrastructure factors such as quality of electricity supply, and availability of telephones and televisions. Out of all these factors, we find that education most consistently plays a key role, in terms of its acquisition as a reason for computer and Internet use, and as an enabling variable (especially in the case of English language knowledge). Other factors appear to be less important, or not significant, in driving computer and Internet use in these situations.