Here's one statistic the Utah Tourism Council isn't going to be touting: According to a new study, Utah leads the nation, per capita, in its consumption of online porn.

According to this ABC News report, analyst Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School crunched some numbers for a company that runs dozens of adult websites. Taking credit-card data from 2006 to 2008 - with the customers' names removed, leaving the purchase date and the customers' zip codes - Edelman found little difference between states with a high rate of online porn sales and those with a low rate.

Edelman's research found that of the top 10 states for consuming online porn, eight of them gave their electoral votes to John McCain in the 2008 election. And the No. 1 state, with an average of 5.47 adult content subscriptions for every 1,000 home broadband users, was Utah.

Edelman told ABC he's not 100-percent sure why people in conservative states seem to use online porn more than their liberal counterparts, but he's got a guess: "One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more."

Labels: internet