USE OF COMMUNITY ICTS 85
that females, the unemployed, and those with lower incomes expressed
the greatest satisfaction, even though typical users were young males with
higher educations and incomes. Daryle Niedermayer [19] showed that the
people with the strongest interest in using a community network were
those with lower education levels or household incomes under $15,000.
Collectively, the above literature suggests that demographics alone have a
limited influence on use; their effects may be mediated by users’ attitudes
toward and perceptions of the service. However, despite the importance
of the findings, these studies are limited by the fact that they were grounded
on either conveniently collected samples or anecdotal reports. This limitation
suggests a need for an empirical investigation that would more
rigorously test the influence of demographic variables on community network
use along with appropriate psychological factors.
In addition, the rapidly growing Internet market suggests an important
environmental factor that could affect the use of community networks:
whether or not one has accessibility to an alternative ISP. Although previous
researchers have not investigated this factor, alternative service accessibility
could have a critical influence on community network use, especially as
the quality of access gains importance in the effective use of the Internet.
A faster and more reliable Internet service becomes critical as the Internet
permeates into almost every aspect of our lives. As the ICT market expands,
people can get such quality access easily through commercial ISPs, such
as Roadrunner or America Online. However, most community networks
have not reached the state-of-the-art technology levels that those advanced
commercial ISPs provide. This is because most community networks are
operated by public or nonprofit community organizations that run on
relatively limited resources [3, 22]. Consequently, over the past five years,
it has been observed that many community network users who could afford
the higher cost have switched to other services to obtain improved access
[3, 17].
Accordingly, it is conceivable that those who have an alternative service
are different from those who use the community network as their only ISP.
That they could switch to the commercial ISP could indicate that they
could afford the higher cost and are more experienced IT users. While
some have discontinued use of the community network service, others
retained their memberships. Thus, it can also be speculated that people
who keep their community network membership may perceive the service
differently than those who end their membership. Presumably, those continuing
members are more likely to perceive the service as a service that
exists for the community rather than just another ISP. Furthermore, this
perception could result in different use patterns that are distinguished
from those who use the community network as their only ISP. In fact,
consumer behavior studies generally support this prediction by showing