Broadband Internet and social capital

•The topology of the voice network affected broadband penetration during the 2000s.•Broadband Internet displaced several aspects of social capital.•Access to broadband Internet caused a decline in civic and political participation.•Some forms of cultural consumption also decreased with the diffusion...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of public economics 2022-02, Vol.206, p.104578, Article 104578
Main Authors: Geraci, Andrea, Nardotto, Mattia, Reggiani, Tommaso, Sabatini, Fabio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Broadband infrastructure
Civic capital
ICT
Internet
Networks
Social capital
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Summary:•The topology of the voice network affected broadband penetration during the 2000s.•Broadband Internet displaced several aspects of social capital.•Access to broadband Internet caused a decline in civic and political participation.•Some forms of cultural consumption also decreased with the diffusion of broadband Internet.•Broadband Internet did not significantly affect social trust. 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.
ISSN:0047-2727
1879-2316
DOI:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104578