Broadband Internet and social capital

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

February 15, 2022

Summary:

We study the impact of broadband penetration on social capital in the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits a technological feature of the telecommunication infrastructure that generated substantial variation in the quality of Internet access across households. The speed of a domestic connection rapidly decays with the distance of a user’s line from the network’s node serving the area. Merging information on the topology of the network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital from 1997 to 2017, we show that access to fast Internet caused a significant decline in civic and political engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration crowded out several dimensions of social capital.

Published in

Journal of Public Economics

Volume

Volume: 206:104578

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104578

ISSN

472727

Subjects

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