Influence of Information Technology on Social Spatial ... - Springer Link

Chin. Geogra. Sci. 2008 18(4) 316–322 DOI: 10.1007/s11769-008-0316-x www.springerlink.com

Influence of Information Technology on Social Spatial Behaviors of Urban Residents — Case of Nanjing City in China ZHEN Feng1, WEI Zongcai2 (1. School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; 2. Guangzhou Urban Planning & Design Survey Research Institute, Guangzhou 510060, China) Abstract: Taking Nanjing as a case, the paper explains the spatial behavior differences existing in the information technology use among different groups of residents and households, by virtue of analyzing the survey data of urban households in the 11 districts of Nanjing, from the social, spatial, life and other non-technical angles. Also it makes various analyses and evaluation quantitatively and qualitatively on the social and spatial effect of information technology. The results show that the new technology is changing the social spatial behaviors of urban residents. New behavioral spaces of urban family such as telecommuting, email and QQ have begun to emerge. With the help of Internet, the communication scope of families has expanded greatly, and more new forms of publicizing community information have begun to emerge. Telecommunication contact forms have been developing swiftly, and their frequencies of contact have been increasing dramatically. Keywords: information technology; households; social and spatial behavior; social and spatial effect; Nanjing

1 Introduction Having completely penetrated into various global fields such as economy, politics, culture and social life, information technology has not only changed the previous forms of receiving, processing and transmitting information, but also changed the forms of emergence and existence of information itself. It has broadened the space of human exchange and caused a series of major changes of the realistic society from time to space, as well as from social stratification, social interaction to social relationship. Research literatures of the influence of information technology on the social space of residents chiefly focus on three aspects. The first one discusses the influence of information technology on the relationship between the structure of families and workplaces. As is pointed out by many scholars, the innovation of long-distance telecommunication technology is obscuring the differences between the family and workplace, directly changing office locations, and transforming the transportation system into an infor-

mation-intensive infrastructure. Information and telecommunication technology are potentially emancipating workers from fixed workplaces, which has a far-reaching influence on the social structure, thus resulting in new organizations to meet its demand (Giuliano and Genevieve, 1998; Mitchell, 1999). Liu (2002) has analyzed the potential changes of the spatial behaviors of senior high school students of Beijing in Internet use. The second one is the influence of information technology on the daily travel of residents and transportation. The emergence of electronic telecommunication network will possibly produce more, not fewer, face-toface activities (Thrift, 1996). In addition, as shown by evidences, intensive use of telecommunication is in direct proportion to high-level travel (Michel, 2004). Through the four effects of synergy, replacement, production and enhancement, traditional places have been reshaped (Stephen and Simon, 1996; Arnulf, 1998; Jiang and Yang, 2000; Liu et al., 2007). The last one is the influence of penetration of information technology on social activities and structure. The growth of Internet and family commuting has triggered

Received date: 2008-03-08; accepted date: 2008-10-10 Foundation item: Under the auspices of Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40435013, 40301014) Corresponding author: ZHEN Feng. E-mail: [email protected]

Influence of Information Technology on Social Spatial Behaviors of Urban Residents

the debate on how social essences and computer-regulated telecommunication affect social relationship (Castells, 1996; Yan, 1998). Most researches have revealed the amazing differences among USA, Europe, Africa and Asia in Internet and computer penetration. Those differences are interpreted as those chiefly in income, instead of in human capital and telecommunication facilities, as well as in population change and management system. Taking Nanjing for an example, this paper attempts to conduct a comparative analysis of the influence of information technology on the social space of urban families at the levels of districts, especially between urban proper and suburban area, in 2000 and 2008, in such aspects as resident families with different incomes, occupations and ages in different districts, forms of information access, changes of behavioral spaces as well as communities and neighborhoods, so as to further supplement and perfect the researches into the influence of informatization on urban social space.

2 Study Area and Method 2.1 Study area As one of the most important central cities in the Changjiang (Yangtze) River Delta, Nanjing has a fast developing society and economy. In recent years, informatization of Nanjing has been developing rapidly. Now Nanjing has become one of the eight key telecommunication hubs in China. By the end of 2007, Nanjing had 807×103 households of Internet broadband users, with a rate higher than 13%. The percentage had exceeded 10% of the threshold, which signifies that Nanjing has entered the period of rapid development in terms of broadband. In 2007, the community informatization of Nanjing was perfected continuously, with its information system of community management covering all its urban and rural communities. All the Resident Committees were connected with Internet on the information network platform of urban communities, and the web connection rate of village committees on the information network platform of rural communities reached 60%. 2.2 Questionnaire design Owing to the lack of relevant statistical data, questionnaire and interview are two major methods adopted for

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the research into the influence of domestic and overseas information technology on society and economy. This research has conducted a detailed pertinent survey to the families of urban residents of 11 districts of Nanjing in the form of questionnaire. The development of informative infrastructure construction of six districts in urban proper, including Xuanwu, Baixia, Qinhuai, Jianye, Gulou and Xiaguan, is relatively perfect. However, in five suburban districts such as Pukou, Luhe, Qixia, Yuhuatai and Jiangning, many families do not own such newly-emerging information telecommunication equipment as computers and Internet owing to their relatively slow economic development and expansive rural areas. And the social spatial effect of information technology on families is not very obvious. Considering the above, we took the six districts in the urban proper as the major regions of this survey. We have also conducted an in-depth interview with some interviewees. In this study, the telecommunication data of 2000 and 2008 were acquired by an investigation. The questionnaires chiefly cover questions on 14 aspects of the changes of the urban residents of different districts in Nanjing: information source, transportation and telecommunication expenses, frequency of telecommunication use, time spending on Internet, time of using computer in home and office, forms of telecommunication with neighbors, role of computer, computer accessed to Internet or not, the influence of network on the forms of recreation and leisure, contents of Internet searching, times of Internet service every week, broadband and community management, effect of broadband on neighborhood relationship, as well as the relationship between face-to-face and telecommunication. As many as 550 questionnaires were distributed in that survey, 397 of which were effective, with an effectiveness rate of 72.2%. According to the surveyed samples, most of the families surveyed are three-member nucleus ones, accounting for nearly 65% of the total number of families surveyed. However, there are some big 5-member or 6-member families in which three generations live together, accounting for a lower percentage (about 5%) respectively. In terms of the occupation distribution of the samples, most of them are professional technicians, commercial workers, etc., accounting for more than 20% respectively. Next come such occupations as service workers,

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ZHEN Feng, WEI Zongcai

office clerks and people concerned, workers of governmental institutions, workers of public undertakings, etc., covering 10%–20% respectively. With regard to the per capita monthly income of the samples, the three classes including 1000–2000, 2000–3000, and 3000–5000 yuan (RMB) account for more than 20% respectively, the one of 5000–10,000 also claims a high percentage too, 16.47%, while those with per capita monthly income of less than 1000 yuan accounts for a low percentage, merely 6.67%. 2.3 Data processing We have made both quantitive and qualitative analyses on questionnaires using software of SPSS12.0 and Excel, and we also analyzed and compared various indices which reflect the social spatial effect of information technology by the method of mathematical modeling, and studied the evolution of the use of information telecommunication technology, the expansion of the scope of family communication, etc.

3 Results and Discussion 3.1 Gradual predominance of telecommunication contact of urban families Generally, the traditional contact forms of geographical space in Nanjing have been declining gradually, from 43.5% in 2000 to 30.18% in 2008, while the telecom-

munication forms of virtual space tend to develop swiftly, increasing by 13.39% (Table 1), and are in an absolutely predominant position, which also reflects the active degree of families in using the virtual contact forms. From 2000 to 2008, the percentages of such forms as home visits and ordinary letters have been decreasing obviously, of which the percentage of home visits has decreased by more than 10%. The percentage of mobile phone has risen by more than 15%, higher than that of fixed telephone, hence becoming the most important contact form of families. While the percentage of fixed telephone has declined dramatically, with a decrease of more than 10% from 2000, however, it is still a contact form only next to mobile phone. Since 2000, online chatting has increased by more than three folds from 2.16% to 7.44%, while the percentage of email in the daily use of families is not so high as expected. It can be seen from the above that the members of families prefer communicating with mobile phones to Internet. As can be seen from Table 1, the evolutions of contact forms of families in both urban proper and suburban districts of Nanjing are basically consistent with each other. Both the percentages of telecommunication forms of the two areas tend to grow dramatically. Furthermore, the growth of suburban districts is higher than that of urban proper. However, in terms of specific evolutions of commu-

Table 1 Comparison of communication forms of families at different levels in Nanjing Communication form

Percentage of 2000 (%)


Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

Telecommunication

56.43

57.88

52.30

69.82

70.21

68.73

Fixed telephone

39.57

39.80

38.91

28.85

28.62

29.73

Mobile phone

13.41

13.85

12.13

30.03

30.23

29.34

Email

0.43

0.29

0.84

2.98

3.13

2.32

Fax

0.54

0.73

0.00

0.31

0.28

0.39

Online chatting

2.16

2.92

0.00

7.44

7.67

6.95

Telegram

0.32

0.29

0.42

0.21

0.28

0.00

Traditional

43.57

42.12

47.70

30.18

29.79

31.27

Home visit

37.95

36.59

41.84

27.59

27.38

28.19

Ordinary letter

4.11

4.08

4.18

1.35

1.28

1.54

Express delivery

0.65

0.58

0.84

0.41

0.28

0.77

Others

0.86

0.87

0.84

0.83

0.85

0.77


nication forms, residents in urban proper and suburban area are slightly different. The growth of families in the urban proper in such forms as email is higher than that of the families in suburban area, while the former is lower than the latter in such forms as mobile phone and online chatting. The reason needs to be explored in depth, but what must be mentioned is that Internet bars have greatly lowered the threshold for family members to access Internet. They have given residents who cannot afford a computer an opportunity to access Internet, which facilitates the access equity of information network to a certain extent. 3.2 Emergence of new behavioral space of urban families 3.2.1 Working through telecommuting Working through telecommuting blends urban residence and work function as a whole. Not only can it reduce the commuting time and transportation cost of residents going to and off work, but also workers can flexibly choose office time and space, which helps save

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office area for institutions and alleviate traffic congestion for society. Therefore, telecommuting offers considerable potential economic and social benefits. According to the questionnaires for urban residents, about 77.15% of samples think they can do nothing without computers. Moreover, 78.02% of surveyed families can access Internet via their own computers. Computers have become an indispensable tool for the work and life of most residents. As can be seen from Table 2, the percentage of the urban residents of Nanjing taking up telecommuting work was very low in 2000, less than 2%, while most sampled residents taking up telecommuting work only had the frequency of 1 or 2 every week. In contrast, by 2008, this percentage has exceeded 20%, and the weekly frequency of telecommuting has also increased. In addition, the frequency in the urban proper is obviously higher than that of suburban districts. However, in general, although telecommuting work-style has been understood and accepted by residents, it has not yet been adopted on a large scale.

Table 2 Comparison of frequency of taking up telecommuting work each week for urban families in Nanjing Frequency



Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

98.18

97.55

100.00

79.95

79.25

81.36

1–2

1.36

1.84

0.00

13.48

13.21

13.56

3–5

0.00

0.00

0.00

4.75

5.66

3.73

6–10

0.46

0.61

0.00

1.82

1.88

1.35

11–20

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

21–50

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0

3.2.2 New places for recreation and leisure After family members learned how to access Internet, main forms of recreation and leisure of urban resident families in Nanjing underwent a major change. In the past, their main forms of recreation and leisure took place in turn: watching TV, going shopping, reading newspaper, chatting and reading books, accounting for 19.34%, 14.87%, 14.34%, 10.66% and 10.53% respectively. In contrast, since residents learned how to access Internet, the main forms have taken place in turn: online chatting, online games and watching TV, accounting for 18.08%, 14.43% and 11.57%, respectively. It can be seen that the traditional forms such as watching TV, going shopping and reading newspapers have decreased,

Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

not a mention to get chatting together for families, while the newly-emerging online chatting and online games have risen to be the first and second places in the recreational forms respectively. In this respect, urban resident families in in urban proper and suburban area of Nanjing assume similar trends of change. The percentage for urban families of Nanjing to use online shopping and online games increases gradually, and new venues for recreation and leisure have emerged. From the comparison of the frequencies of online shopping and online games on average every week for urban families of Nanjing, online shopping was still a new thing in 2000, with the percentage less than 10% and the frequency being only once or twice a week. How-

320


ever, the online games at that time had already started, and more than 20% of residents had had online game experience. More than 10% of residents played online games 1–2 times, and about 5% of residents 3–5 times and 6–10 times a week. By 2008, nearly half of resident families in Nanjing have had online shopping experience. More than 30% of residents still do it 1–2 times a week, while nearly 10% of sampled people 3–5 times. In contrast, more than 2/3 of residents have played online games, and the percentage of more than 6 times a week exceeds 30%. Compared with online shopping, online games have become popular more quickly. 3.2.3 New communication platforms The forms of communication among residents chiefly include four types: local synchronization, local asynchronization, tele-synchronization and tele-asynchronization. With development and progress of telecommunication technology, major types of communication among residents have gradually transformed from local synchronization and local asynchronization to tele-synchronization and tele-asynchronization. The reasonable and convenient online instant telecommunication tools such as email and QQ have greatly broadened the scope of daily communication and activities of residents. As derived from the comparison of average frequencies of using “email” and “online chatting” every week in 2000 and 2008 for urban families of Nanjing, “email” and “online chatting” have been understood by many residents, and more than 30% of residents have used them. To be more specific, the frequency of families using such new communication platforms as “email” and “online chatting” is more than three times a week. By 2008, less than 20% of residents have not attempted “email”, while only a little more than 20% of residents have not had experience of “online chatting”. And the use frequency of all new telecommunication tools such as “email” and “online chatting” of more than 3 times a week is more than 60%, which reflects the active degree of urban families of Nanjing in using new communication techniques.

3.3 Community informatization and neighborhood As information telecommunication technology is being gradually popularized and penetrated into communities and families, the percentage of broadband access of families becomes increasingly higher, and traditional communities are being changed. 3.3.1 Great expansion of communication scope of families The changes of the communication scope and scale of urban families can be explained by the degree of communities accessing Internet and families participating in virtual activities. Compared to 2000, the capability of accessing informatization for urban communities of Nanjing at present has dramatically increased. To be more specific, in 2000, the rate of household access to broadband of Nanjing was nearly 45.89%, while by 2008, the percentage has doubled to 91.74%. Resident communities of Nanjing have increased more greatly in webpage possession rate and BBS possession rate, growing by 8.38% and 17.49% respectively in the past eight years. The community webpage possession rate of Nanjing has exceeded 1/3, and the BBS possession rate is lower, but has also exceeded 1/5 (Table 3), which indicates that the percentage of participating in the access of Internet communities in various districts of Nanjing is rising rapidly. Compared with suburban area, whether in 2000 or in 2008, various Internet-access indices of communities of urban proper are a little higher. However, compared with 2000, the gap of accessing Internet between urban proper and suburban area tended to be further bridged. 3.3.2 Insignificant influence on neighborhood Theoretically, the construction of household access of broadband has added a new channel to residents and their neighbors, as it can increase the frequency of communication between residents and their surrounding neighbors. However, while answering the question “What influence do you think the construction of household access of broadband has had on the frequency of your

Table 3 Comparison of major informative indices of urban communities in Nanjing (%) Household access rate of broadband

Webpage possession rate

BBS possession rate

Whole

Urban

Suburban

Whole

Urban

Suburban

Whole

Urban

Suburban

Nanjing

proper

area

Nanjing

proper

area

Nanjing

proper

area

2000

45.89

47.02

42.86

4.31

5.33

1.59

1.21

1.32

0.59

2008

91.74

93.75

86.36

36.10

37.71

31.82

21.16

21.71

19.70


communication with your neighbors”? About 27.78% of residents chose “Having strengthened”, 13.70% chose “Having weakened”, while 46.67% of sampled people chose “Irrelevant”, which indicates residents have obviously not realized or paid enough attention to the important role of information network construction in refiguring the public life of communities. Compared with suburban area, the frequency of communities in urban proper using network to strengthen communication among residents appears obviously a little higher. 3.3.3 Emergence of new forms of publicizing community information With the penetration of information telecommunication technology into urban communities, the forms of publicizing some public information about water, electricity, consumption guide, food and medicine safety, etc. inside communities have also changed. In addition to the original forms such as the bulletin board and bill, such new forms as short message, webpage, BBS and notice have also begun to be used extensively. Under such an influence, percentage of the traditional form of the bill

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has slightly decreased, while the new publication forms have begun to emerge slowly. Information on water, electricity, etc. of urban communities in Nanjing was publicized chiefly through the traditional form of bill in 2000, accounting for 73.36% of the total, other forms such as the bulletin board covered 10.81%. While such newly-emerging forms as short message, telephone and webpage accounted for 5.41%, 7.72% and 2.70% respectively. By 2008, bill has accounted for 71.59%, still the dominant form of publicizing community information, while the percentage of short message of mobile phone has risen to 10.23%, nearly doubling the percentage of 2000, ranking the second. In addition, the percentage of publicizing information via webpage has also doubled. The percentage of various forms of publicizing information of communities in urban proper and the suburban area has a little difference. The process of the community informatization construction of suburban area is slower than that of urban proper, but their gap is being bridged (Table 4).

Table 4 Comparison of forms of publicizing community information of urban residents in Nanjing Form of publicizing information Short message of mobile phone Telephone Bill Webpage Others



Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

Whole Nanjing

Urban proper

Suburban area

5.41

5.82

3.06

10.23

10.47

9.09

7.72

7.91

6.12

5.30

5.21

6.35

73.36

72.49

75.08

71.59

71.05

72.86

2.70

3.70

2.16

5.30

5.94

3.48

10.81

10.08

13.58

7.58

7.33

8.22

4 Conclusions The paper has analyzed the social spatial influence of information technology on urban families of Nanjing in 2000 and 2008 by using the questionnaire from such aspects as the form of acquiring information, the emergence of new behavioral spaces, forms and frequencies of contact and community informatization. As are certificated by the study, the percentage of such new information acquiring means as mobile phone and Internet of Nanjing tends to rise rapidly. Although the evolution of the information means of urban proper and suburban area is basically consistent with each other, at the levels of various districts, information acquiring means have an obviously difference. Such online instant communication tools as telecommuting, email and QQ

have begun to emerge, accordingly, new behavioral spaces of urban families come on. The time of online grows rapidly, especially in urban proper, and Internet has begun to guide and substitute the daily travel of residents. With the help of Internet, the communication scope of families has expanded greatly, and new forms of publicizing community information have begun to emerge, but information technology does not have an obvious influence on the neighborhood. Such telecommunication contact forms as mobile phone and network of urban families in Nanjing have been developing swiftly, and their frequencies of contact have been increasing dramatically. Those conclusions have also confirmed the research results of some scholars at home and abroad, and reflected the general trend of development changes in the field of informatization not only in Nan-

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jing, but also in all the cities of China. As it is difficult to obtain data, the study of two periods of 2000 and 2008 has only reflected a general trend of changes, instead of accurately indicating concrete changes of urban families in face of informatization. The future research should be oriented to strengthen regular and continuous surveys and interviews at the community level, as well as making an in-depth analysis of the mechanism behind those changes. References Arnulf Grübler, 1998. Technology and Global Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castells M, 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Giuliano Genevieve, 1998. Information technology, work patterns and intra-metropolitan location: A case study. Urban Studies, 35(7): 1077–1095. Jiang Wei, Yang Dengsong, 2000. Research on character of urban citizen travels in the network information society. Journal of

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