Benefitting from Digital Opportunity: Do Socio-economically Advantaged and Disadvantaged Groups React in the Same Ways?

ABSTRACT

This study investigates differences in Internet continued-use intention for socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged groups in Cote d’Ivoire by comparing their expectancy disconfirmation models. Its findings postulate that use-continuance behavior may be a viable proxy for understanding digital inequality especially in societies where the internet is readily accessible. In so doing, it provides an alternative theoretical framework for understanding and/or investigating the digital divide in various societal contexts in the current era where, because of significant advances in physical access to the internet made possible by mobile telephony and extensive diffusion of the internet, mere access is rapidly declining in value as a clear proxy for the presence, scope and/or intensity of the digital divide. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital inequality
• internet
• Africa
• integrative model
• socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged
• use continuance

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CODESRIA. The authors also thank Mark Keil, the Board of Advisors Professor, and Dr. Hsieh of Computer Information Systems at Georgia State University and for their advice and guidelines at the early stage of this work. Finally, we acknowledge the help of our research assistants, namely Mariama Noura KEBE, Essan Sandra-Marie Albertine DIBO-AMANY, Souckeihyna Axelle Coralie KEITA, during the data collection.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bangaly Kaba

Bangaly KABA, Ph.D. is currently on the faculty of Athabasca University, Faculty of Business. He earned his PhD degree in Information Systems from a joint PhD program administered by the four largest universities in Montreal (UQAM, HEC, Concordia University and McGill University) and a Master degree in project management from UQAM. His research interests include the adoption and implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the impact of ICTs on organizations, quantitative methods, and management of international projects. He has published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences, Communication of the Association of Information Systems, International Journal of Information Management and Electronic journal of Information Systems in developing countries. He has published/presented conference papers at major national and international conferences on ICT and Project management issues.

Peter Meso

Peter Meso, Ph.D. is a member of faculty at the Lutgert College of Business, Florida Gulf Coast University. Dr. Meso publishes research in the discipline of information systems that is focused on the interactions of people and information technology. Specifically, his published works address the design and development of management information systems, the qualities and attributes of information and of emergent information technologies, knowledge and data management, and global information systems with emphasis on information systems for development. His research appears in various Information Systems Journals, including Information Systems Research, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, and Information Systems Journal; Journal of Global Information Management, Information Technology for Development, among others. Dr. Meso currently serves as the Managing Editor of the African Journal of Information Systems. He earned his PhD. in Management Information Systems from Kent State University.