The Digital Divide: Current and Future Research Directions - MISRC ...

issue which represent refinements of the best research presented at the symposium, and
which serve to illustrate the type of research we hope to spawn with this survey paper.
There are two papers at the individual level (by Rensel et al. 2006 and Hargittai 2006,
respectively, in a future issue), one paper at the organizational level (by Forman et al.
2005b in the current issue) and three papers at the country level (by Dewan et al., 2005
and Kauffman and Techatassanasoontorn 2005 in this issue, and Crenshaw and Robison
2006 in a future issue).
Starting with the individual-level studies, Rensel et al. [2006] examine the issue
of individuals engaging in private transactions in public places. They first develop a
conceptual model of the impact of physical and virtual facilitating conditions of public
Internet access points on the individual user’s willingness to engage in online commerce
transactions. While people may be willing to access general information from public
places, they reason that engaging in private transactions in public places may be quite
different. They apply their model with a survey of library patrons’ attitudes toward
library-based Internet access. Because the public library has often been mentioned as a
solution to the individual digital divide problem, if users of the Internet in such public
locations are inhibited in their use, then the digital divide may be more problematic than
typically expected. The results indicate that the physical and virtual factors of using the
Internet in such public places do impact users’ perceptions, which impact their
willingness to engage in private transactions in public places. Further, these findings are
moderated by differences in perceptions of the importance of privacy.
The other paper at the individual level, Hargittai [2006], is a good example of
research into the second order effects associated with the digital divide. Based on the
premise that productive use of the Internet requires basic Web skills, this paper focuses
on the likelihood that Internet users make spelling or typographical mistakes, which can
be a significant hurdle to Web use. Analyzing data obtained from an in-person field
study of 100 individuals, she finds that education level is the most significant predictor of
the likelihood of Web users to make mistakes, suggesting the role of social networks to,
in part, remedy this problem.
Turning to the only study at the organizational level of analysis, Forman et al.
[2005b] extend their previously mentioned work by using their large sample of nearly
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