Small Broadband Providers: Where and Why?

Using new data set of Federal Communication Commission, we model where small broadband providers choose to locate. When using all areas data, we find that even in term of small broadband providers, digital divide between rural and urban areas still exist. However, when we restrict data on areas previously depicted as no provider, rural areas seem to be an attractive target for small broadband providers. In addition, areas with high number of household but low number of business seem to be interested by small broadband provider especially rural areas. The results also suggest that USDA policies to increase broadband providers in rural area are ineffective.Marketing,

Essays on demand for water-based recreation in Oklahoma

Scope, Method of Study, and Findings: Even though the demand for lake recreation in Oklahoma has increased continuously since the 1950s, few recent studies have analyzed the demand for lake recreation as well as their welfare effects from lake use in term of recreation. This study proposes to explore what factors influence lake recreation demand and how changes in these factors affect Oklahoma lake recreationists. Discrete choice analysis and travel cost techniques are applied in this study.The first essay explores the benefit gained from combining revealed and stated preferences data (RP and SP data) to explain and predict current and future behavior of lake recreationists. Overall, this study found that the model that uses RP and SP data together provides the best explanation and prediction of lake recreationists' current and future behavior.In addition, the second paper also develops a linked site choice model that combines current and potential lake recreationists' data to calculate the annual welfare changes due to lake quality changes. The idea of this essay is that new lake users attracted by improvements in lake quality should be included in estimating recreational demands because some current non-users could be attracted by higher lake quality. Failure to include this group of people results in biased annual welfare estimates. This study found that the model that pools current and potential lake recreationists' data provides significant larger annual welfare estimates than that which estimates from current lake users only. Furthermore, the combined current and potential lake user model can also capture the annual welfare changes from potential lake recreationists, which cannot be generated by the model that uses only current lake user data.The third and final essay of this study focuses on anglers' preferences for the Close-to-Home-Fishing Program (CTHFP). Generally, anglers are willing to pay for increases in management effort such as larger stocked catfish and increased variety in fish stocked in the CTHFP ponds. However, relatively speaking, anglers are more willing to pay more for physical amenities such as fishing docks and restroom facilities

Does Broadband Access Impact Population Growth in Rural America?

Population growth, Broadband, Spatial econometric, Average treatment effects, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Scope Insensitivity in Child's Health Risk Reduction: A Comparison of Damage Schedule and Choice Experiment Methods

The focus of this study is to explore the issue of scope insensitivity concerning two different elicitation formats with regard to differences in preferences distributions. For this purpose, we apply choice experiment (CE) and damage schedule (DM) methods to elicit preferences for different child’s health risk reductions in school in Thailand. The data comes from 1,116 parents who have at least one child attending school from prepared kindergarten to grade 9. Empirical evidences first suggest that these two methods provide the same preferences of respondents on the most preferred and the least preferred of risk reduction issues. However, scope insensitivity occurs for some risk reductions issues elicited by CE. Namely, willingness to pay of higher level of risk reduction and those of lower level of risk reduction in the same issue are statistically indifferent. On the other hand, there is no occurrence of scope insensitivity in all risk reduction issues obtained by DM. This pattern is still unchanged even when the sample is separately analyzed by socio-economic factors such as education and income

“Small” Broadband Providers and Federal Assistance Programs: Solving the Digital Divide?

Recent data from the Federal Communications Commission allows for examination of the location decisions of “small” broadband providers, i.e. those with less than 250 subscribers. While anecdotal evidence suggests that small providers may be serving disadvantaged or underserved areas, the data indicates that more than two-thirds service urban areas and seemingly choose areas with high demand potential. This paper models the location decision of these small providers and analyzes whether they are influenced by federal assistance programs such as USDA broadband grants and loans. The results suggest that while small providers do tend to locate in urban areas with higher levels of education and income, they also favor rural areas with high levels of Hispanics and African-Americans. No statistical impact is found for the federal-level policies included in the analysis, implying that the focus of these programs may be on the wrong areas

'Small' Broadband Providers: Where and Why?

Using new data set of Federal Communication Commission, we model where small broadband providers choose to locate. When using all areas data, we find that even in term of small broadband providers, digital divide between rural and urban areas still exist. However, when we restrict data on areas previously depicted as no provider, rural areas seem to be an attractive target for small broadband providers. In addition, areas with high number of household but low number of business seem to be interested by small broadband provider especially rural areas. The results also suggest that USDA policies to increase broadband providers in rural area are ineffective