The use of modern technology has assisted in the development and adaptation of new habits by individuals in their daily activities. Concepts like teleworking, tele-education, tele-shopping, etc. may lead to a reduction of mobility needs allowing people to organize and reprogram their activities the best way possible. The aim of this paper is to examine the level of usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by women and identify their effect on the programming of their daily activities (such as education, leisure, transactions, entertainment) along with their career development. Emphasis is given on the comparison between women that live in rural and less favoured areas in order to examine the differences in perceptions and attitudes towards new technologies. A personalized questionnaire designed to capture womens decision making behaviour was developed. The data collection methodology involves the collection of 600 questionnaires collected via personal interviews and Information Acceleration internet surveys. The sample has been selected from a number of different and diversified Greek provinces in order to assure representativeness of the population as possible. Preliminary analysis of the data shows that the Greek women studied use modern technologies in their daily activities in a relatively low rate, when compared with other EU countries and the USA. In both rural and less favoured areas they prefer to use the traditional means of transport for their usual activities (work, children care, shopping, etc.). In suburban areas and islands this phenomenon is more evident due to the small familiarity with the use of computers. A significant result was the positive correlation between the level of salary, education and the use of modern technologies for activities such as e-banking and e-shopping. Another result is that companies seem to prefer the physical presence of women at the working environment since promotion of teleworking is still limited. Finally, the scenario analysis revealed a preference women familiar with ICT to relocate to the suburbs and islands and entrepreneurs to less favoured areas when government subsidies are generous and the cost of communications and travel are at reasonably low prices. Further research involves the estimation of mixed logit models using the Stated Preferences data, to model womens' choices in terms of using ICTs and conduct tele-activities. These models will demonstrate complementarity and substitution effects between activities conducted via e-mode versus the traditional mode. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.
Abstract