E-government in Depopulated Rural Areas. An Approach to the Reality of Spanish Municipalities

E-government is a tool at the service of the public administration and should be used to progress towards goals of governance and sustainability, showing great potential for rural communities at risk of depopulation. The aim of the study is to ascertain the level of e-government implementation in rural municipalities of depopulated Spain and to reflect on its possible influence on citizens’ intention to emigrate. For this purpose, the Province of Albacete will be taken as the object of study, this province being a paradigmatic example of the deployment of digital services. The paper measures the development of e-government supply by constructing municipal indexes through the content analysis of websites. In parallel, applying regression analysis, the work provides an assessment of the demand and actual use of e-government by rural inhabitants, using the data obtained from a survey conducted by the authors in that province. The results reveal, on the one hand, that the situation of small municipalities is deficient in relative terms in the areas of e-information and e-participation, confirming a digital divide by municipal size. In the demand side, the findings alert on the need to promote greater use of e-government and to improve the digital inclusion of all segments of the population.