IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/iepoli/v22y2010i2p144-152.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How broadband changes online and offline behaviors

Author

Listed:
  • Kolko, Jed

Abstract

Using longitudinal panel data on Internet subscriptions and online and offline activities, I assess how broadband adoption affects behavior. Consistent with previous research, this study finds that broadband adopters increase their overall Internet usage. However, broadband adoption is associated with an increase in relatively few specific applications, like downloading music and online purchasing. Among "socially desirable" activities that governments seek to increase by encouraging broadband adoption, only researching health information rises among broadband adopters. Usage of job and career websites and usage of government sites does not rise as people move from dial-up to broadband. Among offline activities, broadband adoption lowers time spent playing video games but has no statistically significant effect on other activities like reading magazines and watching TV. OLS with person-level fixed effects and the difference-in-differences matching estimator yield similar findings. The results are somewhat sensitive to the time period studied, which could indicate that adopters at different stages of the technology's diffusion respond differently to broadband adoption; it could also reflect the rapid changes in online activities and broadband technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Kolko, Jed, 2010. "How broadband changes online and offline behaviors," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 144-152, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:22:y:2010:i:2:p:144-152
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6245(09)00051-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Clay & Ramayya Krishnan & Eric Wolff & Danny Fernandes, 2002. "Retail Strategies on the Web: Price and Non–price Competition in the Online Book Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 351-367, September.
    2. Rob, Rafael & Waldfogel, Joel, 2006. "Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 29-62, April.
    3. Sinai, Todd & Waldfogel, Joel, 2004. "Geography and the Internet: is the Internet a substitute or a complement for cities?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 1-24, July.
    4. Gaspar, Jess & Glaeser, Edward L., 1998. "Information Technology and the Future of Cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 136-156, January.
    5. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "In a World Without Borders: The Impact of Taxes on Internet Commerce," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 561-576.
    6. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2007. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115, pages 1-42.
    7. Matthew Gentzkow, 2007. "Valuing New Goods in a Model with Complementarity: Online Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 713-744, June.
    8. Fiona Scott Morton & Florian Zettelmeyer & Jorge Silva‐Risso, 2001. "Internet Car Retailing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 501-519, December.
    9. Clay, Karen, et al, 2002. "Retail Strategies on the Web: Price and Non-price Competition in the Online Book Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 351-367, September.
    10. Peter Kuhn & Mikal Skuterud, 2004. "Internet Job Search and Unemployment Durations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 218-232, March.
    11. Jeffrey R. Brown & Austan Goolsbee, 2002. "Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence from the Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 481-507, June.
    12. Fiona Morton & Florian Zettelmeyer & Jorge Silva-Risso, 2003. "Consumer Information and Discrimination: Does the Internet Affect the Pricing of New Cars to Women and Minorities?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 65-92, March.
    13. Kolko, Jed, 2010. "A new measure of US residential broadband availability," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 132-143, April.
    14. Waldfogel, Joel, 2009. "Lost on the web: Does web distribution stimulate or depress television viewing?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 158-168, June.
    15. Goolsbee, Austan & Klenow, Peter J, 2002. "Evidence on Learning and Network Externalities in the Diffusion of Home Computers," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 317-343, October.
    16. Goldfarb, Avi & Prince, Jeff, 2008. "Internet adoption and usage patterns are different: Implications for the digital divide," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 2-15, March.
    17. Hitt, Lorin & Tambe, Prasanna, 2007. "Broadband adoption and content consumption," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 362-378, October.
    18. Fiona Scott Morton & Florian Zettelmeyer & Jorge Silva-Risso, 2001. "Internet Car Retailing," NBER Chapters, in: E-commerce, pages 501-519, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Morton, Fiona Scott & Zettelmeyer, Florian & Silva-Risso, Jorge, 2001. "Internet Car Retailing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 501-519, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Suvrat Dhanorkar & Suresh Muthulingam, 2020. "Do E‐Waste Laws Create Behavioral Spillovers? Quasi‐Experimental Evidence from California," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(7), pages 1738-1766, July.
    2. Brian E. Whitacre, 2011. "Do higher broadband adoption rates mean lower tax collections from local retail sales? Implications of e-commerce in rural areas of the US," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 71-85, June.
    3. Sofia Amaral-Garcia & Mattia Nardotto & Carol Propper & Tommaso Valletti, 2022. "Mums Go Online: Is the Internet Changing the Demand for Health Care?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1157-1173, November.
    4. Diegmann, André, 2019. "The internet effects on sex crime offenses - Evidence from the German broadband internet expansion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 82-99.
    5. Elizabeth Mack & Alessandra Faggian, 2013. "Productivity and Broadband," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 36(3), pages 392-423, July.
    6. Gürtzgen, Nicole & (né Nolte), André Diegmann & Pohlan, Laura & van den Berg, Gerard J., 2021. "Do digital information technologies help unemployed job seekers find a job? Evidence from the broadband internet expansion in Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    7. Wang, Yi & Niu, Geng & Zhou, Yang & Lu, Weijie, 2023. "Broadband internet and stock market participation," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Bekkerman, Anton & Gilpin, Gregory, 2013. "High-speed Internet growth and the demand for locally accessible information content," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-10.
    9. Jason Chan & Anindya Ghose & Robert Seamans, 2013. "The Internet and Hate Crime: Offline Spillovers from Online Access," Working Papers 13-02, NET Institute.
    10. González Chapela, Jorge, 2016. "Disentangling income and price effects in the demand for time online," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 65-75.
    11. Chang, Jieun, 2021. "Broadband technology opportunities program public computer center grants and residential broadband adoption," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(8).
    12. Turk, Tomaž & Trkman, Peter, 2012. "Bass model estimates for broadband diffusion in European countries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 85-96.
    13. Jessica Van Parys & Zach Y. Brown, 2023. "Broadband Internet Access and Health Outcomes: Patient and Provider Responses in Medicare," NBER Working Papers 31579, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Trevor Roycroft, 2013. "Empirical study of broadband adoption using data from the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 214-228, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kolko, Jed, 2006. "Why Should Governments Support Broadband Adoption?," MPRA Paper 3363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Fiona Scott Morton, 2006. "Consumer Benefit from Use of the Internet," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 6, pages 67-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Nestor Duch-Brown & Bertin Martens, 2014. "Consumer benefits from the EU Digital Single Market: evidence from household appliances markets," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2014-03, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    4. Maris Goldmanis & Ali Hortaçsu & Chad Syverson & Önsel Emre, 2010. "E-Commerce and the Market Structure of Retail Industries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(545), pages 651-682, June.
    5. Austan Goolsbee, 2001. "Competition in the Computer Industry," NBER Working Papers 8351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Erik Brynjolfsson & Astrid Dick & Michael Smith, 2010. "A nearly perfect market?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-33, March.
    7. Byrne, David P. & Martin, Leslie A., 2021. "Consumer search and income inequality," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    8. Beethika Khan, 2004. "Consumer Adoption of Online Banking: Does Distance Matter?," Development and Comp Systems 0407002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Anindya Ghose & Yuliang Yao, 2011. "Using Transaction Prices to Re-Examine Price Dispersion in Electronic Markets," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 269-288, June.
    10. Ya-Ling Chiu & Jiangze Du & Jying-Nan Wang, 2022. "The Effects of Price Dispersion on Sales in the Automobile Industry: A Dynamic Panel Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(3), pages 21582440221, August.
    11. Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2005. "Lessons About Markets from the Internet," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 139-158, Spring.
    12. Kory Kroft & Devin G. Pope, 2014. "Does Online Search Crowd Out Traditional Search and Improve Matching Efficiency? Evidence from Craigslist," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(2), pages 259-303.
    13. V. Brian Viard & Nicholas Economides, 2015. "The Effect of Content on Global Internet Adoption and the Global “Digital Divide”," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(3), pages 665-687, March.
    14. Luis Aguiar Wicht, 2019. "Going Mobile: The Effects of Smartphone Usage on Internet Consumption," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2019-07, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    15. Eymann, Torsten (Ed.), 2007. "Tagungsband zum Doctoral Consortium der WI 2007 [WI2007 Doctoral Consortium Proceedings]," Bayreuth Reports on Information Systems Management 24, University of Bayreuth, Chair of Information Systems Management.
    16. Ginger Zhe Jin & Andrew Kato, 2007. "Dividing Online and Offline: A Case Study," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 981-1004.
    17. Ramnath K. Chellappa & Raymond G. Sin & S. Siddarth, 2011. "Price Formats as a Source of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic U.S. Airline Markets," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 83-98, March.
    18. Khan, Beethika S., 2004. "Consumer Adoption of Online Banking: Does Distance Matter?," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt2bt1d76s, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    19. Häring, Julia, 2003. "Different Prices for Identical Products? Market Efficiency and the Virtual Location in B2C E-Commerce," ZEW Discussion Papers 03-68, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Jason Chan & Anindya Ghose & Robert Seamans, 2013. "The Internet and Hate Crime: Offline Spillovers from Online Access," Working Papers 13-02, NET Institute.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:22:y:2010:i:2:p:144-152. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505549 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.