Internet diffusion process in rural tourism: Galician case.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to research the characteristics of the adoption and implementation of utilities provided by Internet in rural tourism establishments from a representative sample of Galicia. We use Rogers’ Theory of Diffusion of Innovation to establish the different adopter categories according to the age of the web presence as dependent variable in our analysis. The following factors determine whether size and demographic and labor staff characteristics influence the time of adoption, by analyzing the behavior of these elements in the different categories of adopters. The results indicate that Internet diffusion process in rural tourism has behavior patterns established in the Rogers’ Model, confirming the existence of five groups of establishments carrying function of time in the network. The size factor and demographic features are not related to the time of adoption. Size and some demographic features explain the belonging to innovator adopters' category.