Bridging the Digital Divide in Rural Europe: A Morphological Box to Support the Innovation of Collaborative Business Models for Rural Digital Services

To bridge the digital divide and provide high-quality, reliable, and secure internet access and digital services to rural areas in Europe, there is a pressing need for new business models. Currently, many existing models are not viable in rural settings due to insufficient return on investment for network or telecom operators, which hampers the deployment of broadband infrastructure (Cavalcante et al., 2021). As a result, rural areas face inadequate digital infrastructure, impeding the roll-out and functioning of digital services (Stojanova et al., 2022). Moreso, digital services in rural areas often suffer from reliability issues, lack scalability, and struggle with interoperability due to time constraints, limited technological capabilities, and a shortage of skilled personnel for digital service development, leading to high operational and maintenance costs (Lee, 2019; Linde et al., 2023). In addition, concerns surrounding data security and trust, coupled with digital illiteracy in rural communities, as well as an overall low population density in rural areas contribute to a lack of demand for digital services (Yaacoub & Alouini, 2020; Linde et al., 2023; Palattella et al., 2016). All-inall, these challenges lead to an uncertain and unfavourable investment climate for digital services (Stojanova et al., 2022). [...]