Transformations  in
Business & Economics

FACTORS INFLUENCING ONLINE CIVIC PARTICIPATION IN MID-SIZED CZECH TOWNS
Petr Burda, Josef Abrham, Zuzana Horvathova

ABSTRACT. The goal of this text is to present the Internet as a medium people both can potentially use and actually use to communicate with public administration and participate in public life. The article presents a ladder of online participation activities which distinguishes between three forms and several types of online participation based on their intensity. What follows is a statistical analysis of citizens' actual online participation. The analysis describes actual online participation by Czech citizens.
 This analysis describes various associations of sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes with the different types of participation. It also uses data on citizens' actual online participation in public life and relations to public administration that were collected in a sample survey in the towns of Blatna, Česky Krumlov and Velke Meziřiči. The survey demonstrated the fact that everyday participation activities with lower levels of intensity (such as emailing public authorities) are more likely to be attended by those more closely engaged in community life (running local businesses or raising their children in the community) and more interested in life around them. Less-frequent but more intensive everyday participation activities (e.g., signing an online petition) are more likely attended by young people with better IT skills. It is our hope that the results will be useful for the public administration's effort to communicate strategically and use the Internet to increase local citizens' engagement in community life. This in turn might enhance efforts to integrate those citizens who would normally be excluded from participation in public life because, for instance, they live in isolated settlements or with physical disabilities. Electronic communication also saves time and cost and represents an opportunity to get more young people to become engaged in community life and spark their interest in public affairs

KEYWORDS: civic participation, internet, local government, Czech Republic.