🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates how AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) exacerbate the digital divide, focusing on sociodemographic and political-cognitive determinants of adoption among German internet users. Method: Drawing on tracked online behavior and structured survey data from 1,376 users, it innovatively integrates the UTAUT-2 theoretical framework with Lasso stability selection to identify robust predictors of AI tool adoption. Contribution/Results: Conventional indicators—such as gender and income—exhibit limited explanatory power. In contrast, political self-efficacy, online political participation, diversity of social media platform use, political knowledge, and written expression ability significantly and positively predict ChatGPT adoption. Conversely, younger age, higher educational attainment, non-full-time employment, and having multiple children act as inhibiting factors. The study pioneers the incorporation of political literacy and digital competence into AI adoption research, revealing novel dimensions of the digital divide in the generative AI era and uncovering underlying structural inequities in AI access and use.
📝 Abstract
A major challenge of our time is reducing disparities in access to and effective use of digital technologies, with recent discussions highlighting the role of AI in exacerbating the digital divide. We examine user characteristics that predict usage of the AI-powered conversational agent ChatGPT. We combine behavioral and survey data in a web tracked sample of N = 1376 German citizens to investigate differences in ChatGPT activity (usage, visits, and adoption) during the first 11 months from the launch of the service (November 30, 2022). Guided by a model of technology acceptance (UTAUT-2), we examine the role of socio-demographics commonly associated with the digital divide in ChatGPT activity and explore further socio-political attributes identified via stability selection in Lasso regressions. We confirm that lower age and higher education affect ChatGPT usage, but do not find that gender or income do. We find full-time employment and more children to be barriers to ChatGPT activity. Using a variety of social media was positively associated with ChatGPT activity. In terms of political variables, political knowledge and political self-efficacy as well as some political behaviors such as voting, debating political issues online and offline and political action online were all associated with ChatGPT activity, with online political debating and political self-efficacy negatively so. Finally, need for cognition and communication skills such as writing, attending meetings, or giving presentations, were also associated with ChatGPT engagement, though chairing/organizing meetings was negatively associated. Our research informs efforts to address digital disparities and promote digital literacy among underserved populations by presenting implications, recommendations, and discussions on ethical and social issues of our findings.
