The impacts of Internet use upon activity participation and travel: results from a longitudinal pane

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• The impacts of Internet use upon activity
  participation and travel results from a
  longitudinal panel study
• Susan Kenyon

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Overview

• Hypothesis informing the research
• Methodology
• Longitudinal, panel-based diary study
• Complementary email survey
• Data preparation
• Sample
• Results
• Analysis of activity participation by Internet
  use quartiles
• Analysis by online/offline status of individual
  activities
• Email survey results
• Conclusions increasing activity participation
  without negative effects?
• Further research

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Hypothesis

• Virtual mobility can provide a viable alternative
  to physical mobility in reducing mobility-related
  exclusion,
• WITHOUT having negative mobility or social
  effects, which may worsen (mobility-related)
  social exclusion.

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Methodology

• The accessibility diary
• Sample
• 96 participants 3 waves, six months apart
• Theoretical sampling income, Internet
  experience, location, transport mode
• Email survey
• More time, less time, no effect?

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Data preparation

• Creation of composite activity categories
• Education
• Information search
• Shopping
• Social networks
• All online activities
• All travel activities
• Creation of a composite database
• No longitudinal trend few demographic changes
• Average weekly time use across three diaries
• Increased sample size reduces noise of natural
  variability

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Results (1) Internet quartiles

• Total weekly Internet use has little effect on
  activity participation
• Exceptions
• Time in total, offline and online information
  search increases substantially and significantly
  with time online
• Time in online social networks activities
  increases substantially and significantly with
  time online
• Time in online shopping activities increases
  significantly between quartiles 1 and 2, 3, 4
  threshold?

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Results (2) within-activity differences

• Note significant differences in participation in
  all activities between those participating
  offline only and those participating online
• In the main, online participation is
  supplementary

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Results (3) email survey

• On balance
• Communications and education supplementary
• Information search substitutive
• Shopping both substitutive and supplementary
• 85.7 participants note an increase in their
  total communications
• Qualitative responses support the above findings

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Conclusions (1)

• Internet use is associated with an increase in
  total participation, for education, information
  search, shopping and social networks activities
• Internet use is associated with an increase in
  offline participation, for education activities
• Education, shopping (in the main) and social
  networks activities are likely to be
  supplementary to their offline equivalents
• Information search and, to an extent, shopping
  activities, are likely to substitute for their
  offline equivalents

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Conclusions (2)

• Internet use is not associated with physical
  mobility
• No evidence to suggest that virtual mobility
  leads to an increase in physical mobility
• No evidence to suggest a decrease in physical
  mobility through substitution except perhaps for
  shopping
• Concerns regarding a decrease in sociability are
  not proven
• Internet use is not associated with a decline in
  sociability
• Online social networks activities supplement
  offline social networks activities, increasing
  total sociability

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Returning to the hypothesis

• Virtual mobility can provide a viable alternative
  to physical mobility in reducing mobility-related
  exclusion,
• WITHOUT having negative mobility or social
  effects, which may worsen (mobility-related)
  social exclusion.

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Lessons for further research

• Representative sample larger sample size
• Disaggregating Internet use
• To fully understand the impacts of Internet use
  for activity participation and personal travel,
  it is necessary to take an activity-specific and,
  where possible, individual task-specific focus
• Using mixed methods
• Triangulation
• Different methods give different results
• Simplify and combine multiple surveys
• The future of longitudinal research
• Expensive, time consuming worth it?
• What are panel studies hiding?

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• Susan.Kenyon_at_uwe.ac.uk until 31 August
• S.L.Kenyon_at_kent.ac.uk 1 September onwards