Thomas, Frank, Zbigniew Smoreda, Benoit Lelong

Internet drop-outs: a forgotten category of users

Abstract

In 2000, an astounding twelve percent of European Internet users had left the Internet. As drop-outs do not well fit into the image of a future-oriented technology, up to now research did not really treat the question. However, their analysis might extend our knowledge about technology adoption including de-adoption. The paper will examine research on Internet dropouts (Katz, Wyatt, Lievefrouw), on the de-diffusion of telephony in the U.S. and in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s (Fischer, Thomas) and combine it with ongoing research at the France Télécom R&D UCE usage lab. We shall try to combine elements of the technology diffusion and the social construction of technology approaches to conceive user retreat from technology. Thus, this first tentative explanation will exclude the supply side though it is important. The data used are provided by the EURESCOM P903 household study on ICT use in everyday life. 9,000 respondents (users and non-users) in nine European countries were interviewed in late 2000 about their socio-economic resources, their attitudes the Internet and their offline behaviour (leisure activities, social networking, geographical mobility) and their online behaviour (Internet services used, length and intensity of Internet experience, among others). The paper will describe the European drop-out population and try to explain their retreat using logistic regression and segmentation analysis. The building blocks of the analysis will be the household resources, attitudes, and the patterns of everyday life. To better control confounding contextual influences the paper will restrict the analysis to a comparison of four countries representing different Internet penetration and dropout rates: The Netherlands: high penetration and a low dropout rate, France: intermediate penetration and drop out, the Czech Republic and Spain: both with low penetration and high dropout. The paper will conclude with some recommendations on how to lower drop-out rates in an European context and highlight future research approaches in the issue.