Schooling Attainment's Influence on Internet Adoption: Education's Role in the Cross-National Development of the Mass-Media Knowledge Gap

Abstract Research about innovation adoption underplays the role of educational attainment in the individual consumption of technology; consequently, past research underestimates the importance education plays independent of wealth in diffusion, particularly as absolute levels of formal education rise worldwide. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study employs clustered logistic regression to show how educational attainment of adults independently relates to household Internet adoption, net of wealth and other social factors. The results nuance and enhance discussions about the Digital Divide and the mass media knowledge gap hypothesis, showing, through a unique, cross-national dataset, that indeed there is an independent association between education and Internet adoption, creating a disadvantage for those with lower educational attainment.