Conservative US States found to be biggest porn consumers

London, Feb 28 (ANI): When it comes to online pornography, American States with more number of people having conservative beliefs are the biggest consumers of illicit material on the web, according to a new study.

The nationwide study of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider did not reveal much discord in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," New Scientist magazine quoted Benjamin Edelman, at Harvard Business School, as saying.

But the study revealed that the States that did consume the most porn tended to be more conservative and religious than those with lower levels of consumption.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," said Edelman.

Edelman got hold of the data by one of his consulting client that runs dozens of adult websites.

Although he is not allowed to identify the firm, it gave him two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.

Adjusting for population and after controlling for differences in broadband Internet access between states, a relatively small difference was found between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.

While the biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users, Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000.

"The differences here are not so stark," said Edelman.

Those who were churchgoers bought less online porn on Sundays in one state, but expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country.

People of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11 percent more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

For a better view of other links between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman merged his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

It was found that states where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed.

And a similar difference was seen for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," said Edelman. (ANI)