Econometric Analysis of Demographic and Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Broadband Adoption in Croatian Rural Counties

In this paper, several groups of demographic and socio-economic factors expected to explain the existing digital gap between the rural and the urban areas are identified and examined. Among the great number of different demographic and socio-economic data, only the factors identified as particularly important for broadband adoption were selected for the inclusion in a further econometric analysis. The conducted comparative econometric analysis examined correlations among broadband adoption and several chosen demographic, social and economic factors in Croatian counties. These factors helped explain broadband adoption in different Croatian counties, classified as urban and rural according to the EU's criterion based on population density. The given results prove that this kind of quantitative data is an appropriate source for the analysis of rural broadband adoption. Analogously, a greater number of factors may be used for achieving a clearer picture of broadband adoption in different types of rural broadband markets.