A recent report (Broadband access and agritourism operations in the United States) looks at the impact of broadband on agrotourism…
The underlying hypothesis of this paper is that operators offering agritourism activities on their farms require broadband to connect with potential customers, promote their business and services through social media and other online channels, and process payments and bookings online. Broadband access is also important for small business marketing, online visibility, and rural tourism (Federal Communications Commission [FCC], 2018; Salemink et al., 2017).
They found…
Our results show that broadband speed adopted in 2012 was significantly associated with the number of agritourism operations in 2017 nationally, after controlling for other covariates. This supports the hypothesis that adoption of fast broadband internet helps farmers to connect with potential customers in offering agritourism services. Counties with a higher number of agritourism operations and farm proprietors in 2012 also had a higher number of agritourism operations in 2017, and local wealth was more significantly associated than local income with the growth of agritourism operations as discretionary spending matters in this context. Additionally, natural amenities were positively associated with the number of agritourism operations, while environmental pollution had a negative association, as expected. The results also show that proximity to metropolitan areas plays a vital role in the success of agritourism operations. Importantly, however, the association between broadband adoption and agritourism success does not exist in rural areas when they are considered separately, for reasons described above.
This study thus sheds light on the association between broadband adoption and agritourism operations, demonstrating that improved adoption can lead to additional income-generating opportunities for farmers in counties with large metropolitan populations, but this is not the case for smaller and more remote counties. It remains to be seen if this result still holds with the next Agricultural Census, which will allow a panel data analysis. We acknowledge the limitations of this analysis, as we used broadband data from 2012. This means that the absolute speed thresholds may now be outdated. However, we suggest that the associations between higher broadband penetration and agritourism success remain relevant. Future work could address the impact of Land Grant University-based extension and other outreach educational programs on broadband utilization and the costs of broadband expansion in rural areas, compared to the benefits. These studies will benefit from using more recent broadband data in conjunction with more up-to-date agritourism numbers.
