Projects

Digital Differentiation: Consumption profiles of fracturing Digital Divides Project Status

Aims

• To develop a detailed, nationwide household classification based on (a) levels of awareness of different ITCs; (b) levels of use of ITCs; and (c) their perceived impacts upon human capital formation and quality of life.
• To anticipate transitions between the categories of the classification, and hence identify how policy might best improve both the quality and amount of access by society.
• To provide ESRC with a product that would enable the content and coverage of other e-Society programme case studies, as well as other academic research, to be placed within a national picture.
• To develop an illustrate application of the usefulness of the classification
• To demonstration how geographic and demographic variables are essential in the interpretation of new digital divides and in the consumer profiling of the e-Society

Methodology

The starting point for this research is the realisation that we know disappointingly little about the diffusion and use of new information and communication technologies (ITCs), and that what we do know is frequently distilled from disparate surveys by inward-looking interest group. This multi-disciplinary research will assemble a range of private and public sector data sources in order to create a nationwide picture of the diffusion and use of ITCs.To check and cross-validate this classification. To explore how this classification might be used to anticipate the pattern of adoption of existing and new ITC developments, and the research will develop an illustrative application of the classification in terms of the impact that these new digital divides might have on voting behaviour.

Keywords

Household classification; populating profiling; geo-demographics; voting behaviour.

Links

www.spatial-literacy.org/esocietyprofiler

Publications

Longley P A 2003. Developments in socio-economic data infrastructures. Progress in Human Geography, 27: 114-21

Longley P A 2003. Towards better understanding of digital differentiation. Computers Environment and Urban Systems 27: 103-6

Webber R, Longley P A 2003 Geodemographic analysis of similarity and proximity: their roles in the understanding of the geography of need. In P A Longley and M Batty (eds) Advanced Spatial Analysis. Redlands CA, ESRI Press: 233-66

Longley P A 2004. On modelling and representation. Progress in Human Geography, 28: 108-16

Longley P A 2005. Urban studies. In K Kempf-Leonard (ed) Encyclopaedia of Social Measurement. Elsevier, San Diego: 921-6.

Longley P A 2005. A renaissance of geodemographics for public service delivery. Progress in Human Geography, 29: 57-63

Berry S J, Longley P A 2005. Assessing the usefulness of store card data in direct sales of financial services. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, in press

Shiode N, Li C, Batty M, Longley P A, Maguire D J 2003. The impact and penetration of location-based services. In H Karimi and A Hammad (eds) Telegeoinformatics: Location-Based Computing and Services. Boca Raton, CRC Press: 349-66

Li C, Longley P A 2005 A test environment for location-based services applications. Transactions in GIS 9: in press

Harris R J, Longley P A 2004. Targeting clusters of deprivation within cities. In G Clarke and J Stillwell (eds) Applied GIS and Spatial Analysis. Chichester, John Wiley, Chapter 6: 89-110

Longley P A, Tobón C 2004. Spatial dependence and heterogeneity in patterns of hardship: an intra-urban analysis. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94: 503-19

Longley P A 2005. GeoDynamics: an introduction. In P Atkinson, G Foody, S Darby, F Wu (eds) GeoDynamics. London, Taylor and Francis, in press.

Longley P A, Goodchild M F, Maguire D J, Rhind D W 2005. Geographic Information Systems and Science (second edition). 517(+xvii) pp. Chichester, Wiley.

Geodemographic classifications, the digital divide and understanding customer take-up of new technologies. BT Technology Journal 24: 67-74 (P A Longley, D I Ashby , R Webber, C Li ) 2006   

The UK geography of the E-Society: a national classification. Environment and Planning A advance online publication, doi:10.1068/a3912 (P A Longley, R Webber, C Li ) 2007

The use of geodemographics to improve public service delivery. In Hartley J, Donaldson C, Skelcher C, Wallace M (eds) Managing to improve public services. Cambridge , Cambridge University Press (P A Longley, M F Goodchild): Chapter 6 in press 2008

Classification through consultation: public views of the geography of the e-Society. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 22: in press (P A Longley, A D Singleton) 2008