The Protective Power of Connectivity: Internet Exposure and Intimate Partner Violence

We study the effect of women's exposure to the internet on the incidence of intimate partner violence (IPV) utilizing data from a large-scale nationally representative data for India. Utilizing an instrumental variable approach, we exploit the exogenous variation arising from cellular tower density at the district level as an instrument for internet exposure. We find women who have access to the internet are at a significantly lower risk of exposure to physical, sexual, emotional and any IPV by 17, 5, 9 and 18 percentage points.We provide further indicative evidence that women's attitudes justifying violence works as a channel of our estimated causal impacts. Our results are robust to a host of sensitivity checks, additional controls, alternative definitions and falsification analysis. We document important heterogeneity in the effects across social groups, wealth index, area of residence, and women's education levels. The effects appear to be particularly important for women from wealthier households and those who are more educated.