New inequality in equality: An empirical study on the effects of device and physical environment appropriateness divide on E-learning outcomes

The high penetration rate of smartphones in recent years has alleviated the concern regarding Internet access in China and facilitates e-learning, especially in rural areas. In such e-learning practice, device appropriateness becomes a new source of the digital access divide. Also, effective access to e-learning depends on the physical environment, which may further weaken or strengthen the influence of device appropriateness divide. However, previous studies have mainly focused on the access dichotomy or quality divide and investigated its downstream influences without considering the physical environment. Thus, this study aims to investigate: (1) does the device and physical environment appropriateness divide exist between rural and urban students? (2) how do these two types of appropriateness divide interact to influence students' e-learning outcomes? To empirically examine these research questions, we applied the chi-square test, the independent sample t-test, structural equation modeling, and Process Macro. Our results reveal some significant and interesting findings. First, we confirmed the existence of device appropriateness divide, whereas partially confirmed the existence of physical environment appropriateness divide between rural and urban students. Second, we validated the significant interactive effect of these two types of appropriateness divide on e-learning outcomes. Our study offers several valuable theoretical and practical implications.