dictors of use when people used the community network as their only ISP.
In contrast, psychological factors were identified as predictors of use when
people had an alternative Internet access.
Comparing the Characteristics of Users With and Without an Alternative
Service
The differences between users with and without alternative service accessibility
were further investigated in research question 3. Specifically, the
question examined whether the two groups were different in terms of their
demographic and psychological characteristics, and their previous and current
use of the service. The differences were tested using independent ttests
at the .05 level. The difference was calculated by subtracting the mean
score for people without an alternative ISP from that of people with an
alternative. A positive mean difference indicates that people with an alternative
had a higher mean score than people without one. Test results
are reported in table 5.
Table 5 shows that people with and without alternative service accessibility
were different across all tested variables, except in the sense of community,
at the .05 level. First, with regard to demographic factors, the two
compared groups had statistically significant differences in all four demographic
characteristics (gender, age, education, and income). Compared to
their counterparts, males, younger, more educated, and more affluent people
had access to alternative Internet services.
With regard to psychological factors, there were statistically significant