Is the Rural Population Caught in the Whirlwind of the Digital Divide?.

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Abstract

Technology represents a benchmark ally for today’s rural world and is a sine qua noncondition for achieving sustainable development. Indeed, today the arrival of digitization and information and communication tools makes life easier for the inhabitants of the rural world in general and for those who work in agriculture. However, not everyone has and knows how to use these technologies. There are very visible differences between the rural world and the urban one in the accessibility and use of technology, especially among vulnerable people (unemployed, elderly, women, etc.), causing a digital divide that reflects the great discrimination suffered by the rural world, full of stereotypes and very traditional role assignments. The objective of this study is to evaluate the differences in terms of access and use of technology. For this reason, the results of a survey carried out on the Spanish rural population have been analyzed with the structural equations tool “PLS-SEM”. They show digital gaps, as well as a disturbance between the different gaps and the socioeconomic situation of users, which imposes the need to take immediate measures to reduce and fight against this type of inequality.