Heterogeneous reactions to Digital Opportunities: a Field Study to Test our Assumptions

Africa needs access to the powerful information and communication tools of the internet in order to obtain the resources and efficiency essential for its sustainable development. Unfortunately, in 2014, the data from internetlivestats.com showed only 9.8% of African populations have access to the internet. This relative low internet penetration rate signals a problem that may threaten the economic development, governmental efficiency, and ultimately the global competitiveness of African countries. Tremendous efforts have been made to provide internet access and policy makers often assumes that the advantaged and disadvantaged people will respond to the same technology in similar ways. The purpose of this paper is to understand differences between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged internet users. Data were collected through a survey from internet users in Ivory Coast. To address digital inequality effectively and economically, as Hsieh et al. (2008), we recommend a group alignment strategy to substitute the typical generic policy that does not distinguish ICT users and treat them as the same and offers a single invariant solution to all populations. The theoretical and practical implications are also described.