Use of e-government services in a deeply divided society: A test and an extension of the social inequality hypotheses

The issue of e-government use is critical in deeply divided societies where the access to social capital is restricted for minorities. E-government use in these societies may differ by ethnic background, size of locality or both. Israel was chosen as a case since it is an example of a deeply divided society. Using data from the Israel’s Social Survey 2015, it was found that the disadvantaged minority has a lower probability of using e-government as compared to other groups. However, when segmenting this population by size of its localities, the stratification structure differs between large and small localities. The conclusion is that the inequality approaches should consider not only the ethnicity but also the size of locality as a factor differentiating between ethnic groups in terms of the specific Internet use.