Factors Affecting Net Pracharat Usage in the Year of COVID-19 Outbreak in Thailand

Abstract

Net Pracharat is a project to expand the Internet network to areas with no commercial potential and no high-speed internet service. Because the income per household is not high in these areas, which is not worth the investment of the private sector. This research aims to study factors affecting the use of Net Pracharat, especially in the year of the COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand. Data for analysis is secondary data in publicly available sources. The use of the Net Pracharat, comes from the Open Government Data of Thailand center, with data classified into 75 provinces. For the factor including COVID-19 disease, it comes from Open Government Data of Thailand center as well. The other factors including household characteristics and digital literacy of the population come from the National Statistical Office of Thailand. The results of the study showed that in areas where Internet penetration is low. Net Pracharat usage is also important, as can be seen in the factor such as the number of COVID-19 infection affecting the household usage. While in areas where Internet penetration is high, the users are low-income households. In addition, as the number of households in the province increases, the use of the Net Pracharat will also increase. Moreover, especially for the working-age population with high education, digital literacy can impact Net Pracharat usage. The policy implication is that Internet penetration should be promoted essentially in low Internet penetration areas such as Net Pracharat and should support the digital literacy of the population to make the population more capable to use the Internet.