E-inclusion or digital divide: an integrated model of digital inequality

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of the societal problem of the deepening digital divide by establishing and testing an integrated conceptual framework for digital divide research.

The authors established the integrated conceptual framework after synthesizing the literature, and then tested the framework by conducting a secondary analysis of a 2014-2015 data set comprised of 398 survey responses and nine interviews with Chinese migrant workers.

The results showed that Chinese migrant workers were partially e-included in the digital society. However, they encountered material, cognitive, motivational, and social access limitations due to the lack of financial, material, educational, psychological, interpersonal, and cognitive resources, which caused them to experience a digital divide. Findings support the use of the integrative model as a potential analytical framework to understand and address digital inequalities.

This study first proposed an integrative framework to understand the measurements and causes of the digital divide and then empirically tested its feasibility.