Digital divide, craft firms’ websites and urban-rural disparities—empirical evidence from a web-scraping approach

Anita Thonipara, Rolf Sternberg, Till Proeger, Lukas Haefner · 2022 · Review of Regional Research

Summary. Using web-scraping data from 345,000 German small firms, this study reveals a significant digital divide between urban and rural areas. Rural firms are half as likely to operate websites as urban firms, despite similar adoption of social media and website maintenance practices. Population density, youth, and education positively correlate with website adoption, while GDP per capita shows a surprising negative association in urban regions. The findings challenge the "death of distance" hypothesis and highlight persistent spatial inequalities in digitalization.

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@article{thonipara-2022-digital-divide-craft-firms-websites,
  title   = {Digital divide, craft firms’ websites and urban-rural disparities—empirical evidence from a web-scraping approach},
  author  = {Anita Thonipara and Rolf Sternberg and Till Proeger and Lukas Haefner},
  journal = {Review of Regional Research},
  year    = {2022},
  doi     = {10.1007/s10037-022-00170-5},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-022-00170-5}
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Digital divide, craft firms’ websites and urban-rural disparities—empirical evidence from a web-scraping approach
AU  - Anita Thonipara
AU  - Rolf Sternberg
AU  - Till Proeger
AU  - Lukas Haefner
JO  - Review of Regional Research
PY  - 2022
DO  - 10.1007/s10037-022-00170-5
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-022-00170-5
ER  - 

Details

DOI

10.1007/s10037-022-00170-5

Countries

Germany

Regions

Europe

Categories

broadband-and-digital, regional-innovation-systems, rural-data-and-definitions

Added

2026-04-28