Exploring the Predictors of the International Digital Divide

The digital divide, while attracting considerable research and political attention since the introduction of the Internet, remains an apparently intractable issue for parts of the developing world. While most prior research focuses on national income as the most significant predictor of the digital divide and thus leaves little room for intervention when financial resources are scarce, the current study identifies institutional stability and infrastructure development as being of similar importance, thereby demonstrating a route out of the otherwise apparent impasse. In this study, we employ TreeNet, a software tool based on the gradient descent algorithm, which has not been previously used in digital divide studies. This tool allows for the determination of the relative importance of predictors of digital development and the importance of predictors that propel countries to top or bottom levels of digital development. The authors also uncover important interactions among predictors of digital development. Separate models were built for the level of Internet use and for the number of mobile phone subscriptions at a country level and these models were found to be different. As a result, the authors were able to determine critical thresholds of infrastructure at which the level of digital development drastically increases.