Prior work suggests the behavioral differences in how people use the Internet are driven by gaps in skills and socio-economic-related differences in access. In this chapter, we explore additional factors in influencing differential Web use, finding that: Demographics are only part of the underlying mechanism, people's use of the Internet is also significantly related to their propensity to trust others with their personal data, their concerns about negative/exploitative online experiences, and feelings of control over their data. We demonstrate these factors' influence across different aspects of Internet use by analyzing a representative survey of U.S. respondents (n=3000) and constructing hierarchical linear regression models of the factors in influencing differential Web uses. These models show that expanding behavioral predictors to include feelings of trust, concern, and control around personal data use yield significant improvements explaining variations across five online behaviors over models including only demographic and socio-economic factors. We further find that these feelings of trust, concern, and control are significantly related to levels of online well-being, operationalized through respondent-reported negative online experiences (e.g., having one's email stolen or being a victim of an online scam), offering empirical evidence that digital inequities may exist for those who are disproportionately victimized online, in addition to those with fewer skills or resources.
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your Elgar Online account