Exploring the World Wide Web Population's Other Half

Reporting results from one of the largest Internet surveys to date, SRI International released new data about users of the World Wide Web--who is on it, how they use it, and why.

The effort is the first to augment standard demographics (such as age, income, and gender) with a psychographic analysis of the Web population. Utilizing one of the world's leading psychographic systems, SRI's VALS 2*, the survey explored the psychology of people's choices and behavior on the Web.

The results paint a picture of two Web audiences. The first is the group that drives most of the media coverage and stereotypes of Web users, the "upstream" audience. Comprising 50% of the current Web population, this well-documented group is the upscale, technically oriented academics and professionals that ride on a variety of institutional subsidies. Yet because this group comprises only 10% of the U.S. population in the VALS 2 system, their behaviors and characteristics are of limited usefulness in understanding the future Web.

The second Web audience comprises a diverse set of groups that SRI calls the Web's "other half." Accounting for the other 90% of U.S. society, these groups are where Internet growth will increasingly need to take place if the medium is to go mainstream. Among the SRI survey's findings of the Web's other half are:
The sections below provide more detail on the findings of the SRI survey, focusing particularly on the dynamics of the Web population's other half.

The Upstream Web Audience

According to SRI, the prototypical upstream Web user falls into a single consumer segment of the U.S. population--called Actualizers in the VALS 2 system. This segment accounts for 50% of the current Web population, yet only 10% of the U.S. population as a whole. Members of the segment are highly educated and work in academic or technical fields (technical professionals, scientists, and professors were the top three job categories).

Actualizers' primary motivation for using the Web, especially in terms of initial usage, appears to be work related (70% believe the Web makes them more productive). Yet the separation between work and play on the Web is fuzzy. 70% of mainstream users also regularly surf the Web for recreational purposes, with 44% reporting occasional conflicts with work in this regard.

As consumers, Actualizers are active, discriminating, adventurous, in the prime of life, and nearing the peak of occupational income. They are particularly strong consumers of higher-brow, quality-associated products--Scientific American, "practical chic" cars such as Acuras, eclectic music and art--and they travel extensively. In short, they are what all the excitement is about when "the consumer Internet" is invoked. The problem is, the fast-growing consumer Internet that most observers anticipate will saturate the Actualizer population relatively quickly, leaving the question of who drives continued growth.

The Other Half of the Web Audience

If the Web is to become a truly mass medium, it must expand beyond the Actualizer segment and include more of the other 90% of U.S. society. Clues about how that expansion must take place are visible in the responses from the Web's other half.

The GenX Contingent. Currently, most of the Web's other half are students or recent graduates working in technical, managerial, or professional fields. This population is overwhelmingly a Generation X crowd, with some 70% of other-half respondents reporting ages under 30.

Two different VALS 2 segments--similar demographically but different psychographically--represent this population. One group, called Strivers, is more technically sophisticated and notably more pro-Web than the other group, called Experiencers. Although Strivers occur in the SRI sample at virtually the same level they occur in the overall U.S. population (13%), their attitudes about the Web indicate an unusually high level of engagement. In the SRI survey, Strivers report spending the most time on the Web (even more than the Web mainstream population), including 70% reporting that recreational Web surfing sometimes conflicts with work. They also disagree vehemently with the statement that the Internet is less useful than the media says. The group's high engagement with the Web is something of a surprise because, as consumers, Strivers typically represent followers rather than leaders. In this regard, their attitudes could point toward a component of faddishness in the current excitement surrounding the Web in addition to the educational Internet-access subsidy--or legacy of such a subsidy--that underlies much of the other-half audience.

The other main group for 20-something Web users, Experiencers seem more easily bored by the Web than Strivers. In addition, Experiencers believe that the Internet makes them less productive, a significant deviation from the overall sample's pro-productivity view. As consumers, members of this group are innovative, stimulation seeking, and fashionable. Although they are a healthy chunk of the overall SRI sample (18% compared to 12% in the U.S. population), their relative coolness to the Web suggests that the Web's form and content is not meeting their expectations. For recreation, these consumers tend toward action, either physically or vicariously through video games such as Doom and action-oriented movies. The Web's current click-and-wait dynamics and its preponderance of text probably cause much of this group's dissatisfaction.

Ironically, advertisers tend to target Experiencers as a chief group representing the "digital revolution." Readers of magazines such as Wired will instantly recognize a genre of visually kinetic, youth-oriented imagery that talks to this audience. Yet the evidence from the SRI survey suggests that, although Experiencers are definitely wired for the Web, they are not necessarily the most intense users. If anything, the results of the survey indicate that the most intense users are those that appreciate the nonkinetic text-with-occasional-graphics media of the current Web.

Underrepresented Segments. In addition to Strivers and Experiencers, two other groups appear in the Web population's other half. The first group is Fulfilleds, an older audience most densely clustered in the 35-45 age range. Fulfilleds are 11% of the Web population, approximately the same level as in the overall U.S. population. Because Fulfilleds are one of the most information hungry VALS 2 segments, they have the promise of overrepresentation in the sample. However, the SRI data suggests that Fulfilleds find the Web difficult to use, both in form and content. For example, Fulfilleds report the highest frustration of any segment with the Web. In addition, 40% of Fulfilleds agree that the Internet is less useful than the media says.

Fulfilleds' information seeking is a manifestation of a desire for order--in a consumer context, for making good choices based on relatively complete information. They read publications such as Consumer Reports, purchase products on the basis of practicality, and make principled lifestyle choices. As Fulfilleds engage the Web's information anarchy reluctantly, they appear to be waiting for more familiar indicators of direction and value on the Web--better navigation tools, contextual authority, and trusted brands. Because Fulfilleds tend to be strong drivers of consumer-information products and services in other media, the group has very good prospects in a maturing Internet marketspace.

The other significant VALS 2 segment on the Web is called Achievers, 13% of the U.S. population but only 6% of the SRI sample. Achievers are a stable, upscale, and family-oriented segment typically working in white-collar occupations such as management and sales. Although occupation and education suggest Achievers should flock to the Internet, they are underrepresented. One reason is that Achievers are predominantly women (both in the U.S. population and in the SRI sample) and are the most time-pressured consumers--characteristics that dispose them against the Internet's male ambience and its disorganized nature. In addition, Achievers place high value on the relationship aspects of communications. Though inclined to Internet participation through education and work, they may find the impersonality, triviality, and poverty of social information on the Internet--and the lack of efficient and easy-to-learn Internet resources--uncongenial.

Like Fulfilleds, Achievers reveal a clear disparity between online and "real world" user profiles, differences that seem to stem from the structure and content of the current Web itself. Better serving these otherwise highly attractive audiences will be increasingly necessary as the Internet transitions from an early-adopter frontier to a more general-purpose commercial and consumer medium. Nonrepresented Segments. Three other VALS 2 segments--Believers, Makers, and Strugglers--only account for some 2% of respondents to the SRI survey. This result is not a surprise. Members of such segments are unlikely candidates for near-term Internet use because of their lack of education, limited financial resources, lack of occupational subsidies, and/or attitudes that tend toward technology suspicion or aversion.

If the various other groups that populate the Web naturally fall into some aspect of academic or corporate subsidy for Internet use, these nonrepresented groups fall between the cracks. As groups, they are the prototypical "information have-nots"--not just for new kinds of media but also, in general, for existing information media such as newspapers.

Many observers have noted that these nonrepresented segments are typified by low income and that, if members of these segments are not assisted with "digital on-ramps" (for example, subsidized Internet access), a two-tier Information Society is inevitable. Yet the SRI research suggests that income-based subsidization alone--such as that associated with telephony in the United States--is not likely to be effective with the Internet. Instead, the SRI research reinforces the idea that the Information Society is evolving a new class structure based on educationally acquired abilities rather than economic wealth. In a society where government interventions focus on the redistribution of wealth, this is a watershed social change. Education cannot be redistributed in the same way taxable wealth can; it can only be redistributed by long-term partnerships between government, businesses, and communities that understand the value of education to the children of the next generation. Although this situation leaves no easy answers to the information have-not problem, it raises some warnings that traditional methods of addressing the problem may be misguided.

Background on the Survey

Between February and May 1995, more than 5500 people took an online version of the VALS 2 attitude questionnaire, augmented with additional Internet-specific questions for some 1000 respondents. This audience was self-selected in that it represented only those people who found the survey through their own Web explorations or those of people they know and who found the time and inclination to answer the questionnaire.

All forms of survey research contain some form of sample bias, but in the SRI survey the effects of self-selection bias are apparently small. First, there are no significant changes in the sample population across the time period of the study, as one would expect if different levels of self-selecting attributes were related to any of the demographics or attitude items of this survey. Second, the SRI sample is closer to the general population demographics than any previous published study, including studies that use more "rigorous" sampling methods, such as random probability samples and mail surveys of U.S. households; typically sample bias distorts a sample away from the general characteristics of the population. Finally, sample bias becomes a serious concern only when there is evidence that some groups may indeed be excluded from the sample. Yet evidence from retail sales figures, institutional surveys, social trends, policy studies, or other surveys does not indicate any social groups that the SRI study may have systematically excluded.

The survey was conducted by SRI's Values and Lifestyles program to investigate how psychographic systems such as VALS 2 can be relevant to helping on-line users identify content of interest and how content providers and advertisers can better understand their potential audiences. Using the results of the survey, work is now underway to create Internet-specific segmentations for several different applications.

* VALS, and acronym for Values and Lifestyles, is a trademark of SRI International.

Copyright 1995, SRI International. For more information or to provide comments, send mail to vals@sri.com