The digital economy challenge facing peripheral rural areas

Abstract

While there is little dispute that rural SMEs have much to gain from an effective engagement with e-commerce, the experience to date, particularly for firms operating in remote locations, points to considerable barriers to their involvement in the digital economy in the short term. Despite the considerable effort being made by the European Union to heighten the awareness of the need for peripherally located rural SMEs to become more involved in exploiting the economic potential of the digital economy, among the major barriers preventing such an involvement by rural SMEs is the difficulty of obtaining affordable high-speed internet access in remote locations in this era of liberalized telecommunications markets.

‘Two-speed’ Scotland: Patterns and Implications of the Digital Divide in Contemporary Scotland

“…However, rural areas have been, and continue to be, unable to fully exploit advantages the digital revolution offers (Grimes 2003;Malecki 2003;Sternberg et al 2009;Royal Society of Edinburgh 2014;Williams et al 2014). This is due to what Townsend et al (2013) described as a complex interplay between the technological challenges of connecting remote-rural communities to the Internet, the costs of providing digital infrastructure in remote and sparsely populated areas and characteristics of the rural population, such as their demographic, income and educational attainment levels, which influence Internet take-up levels.…”

New technologies, old divides: linking internet access to social and locational characteristics of US farms

“…By foregrounding the link between social inequalities and digital access, this study of the rural US seeks to extend existing studies of the digital divide by pointing to the value of incorporating differences within rural society, a lesson that is likely to be pertinent to rural contexts across the world. Given that rural areas are facing the brunt of liberalization policies that favor privatization, this focus on the social characteristics of the digital divide can also become the basis for reflection on the extent to which profit-led private vendors are likely to address social welfare needs in terms of the distribution of internet access (Grimes 2003).…”

Desenvolvimento rural e sociedade da informação em Portugal. Análise do fosso digital de segunda geração na região Norte

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