Broadband access and agritourism operations in the United States

Abstract

An online presence is crucial for agritourism operators to connect with consumers. In this study, we use count data regression models to examine the correlation between average broadband speed adopted and the number of agritourism operations. We found that adoption of fast broadband in 2012 was associated with a significantly higher number of agritourism operations nationally in 2017, underscoring the role of broadband connectivity in facilitating interactions between farmers and consumers, as well as in promoting agritourism. However, only a weak association exists in rural counties, indicating that the broadband–agritourism relationship does not extend to less populated areas.