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This study aims to endeavor to explore the extent of gender digital divide(GDD) in Uttar Pradesh (U.P., IT-Hub of North India), a most populous state of India, with a particular focus on the first and second order of digital divide, including availability, access time and use of the internet.

The authors have adopted stratified multistage sampling procedure for this research and conducted an empirical study on the data set of 600 respondents of six districts of U.P. to perform the inter-regional analysis. Furthermore, χ² method has been used to reveal the factors responsible for the GDD among selected districts of UP.

Statistical results clearly indicate that out of 12 sub-districts, most of the districts suffered from first order as well as second order of GDD, and this gender disparity within an increasing digitization environment is due to the existence of exclusion from basic technological skills, social norms and financial constraints.

The results have implications for the U.P. Government in general and policymakers behind digitization projects in particular as well as the promoters of gender equality including researchers and fellows.

This study is the first to illustrate the orders of the digital gender gap in a developing economy such as India and to gain an insight into the factors behind it. This research will also consider a promising avenue for future work.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

Over the past few years, technology-mediated learning has established itself as a valuable pathway towards learners’ academic and social development. However, within the adoption stages of information and communications technology-enabled education, further questions have been raised in terms of equity of information literacy and learning outcomes. For the past three years, the authors have been working with one of the earliest secondary schools in New Zealand to introduce a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. In this paper, the authors present the findings of a longitudinal investigation into the BYOD project, which offers new insights into the digital divide issues in the context of evolving teaching and learning practices across three levels, namely, digital access, digital capability and digital outcome.

This study is an empirically grounded longitudinal case research conducted over a three-year period in one secondary school in New Zealand. This research has included a number of methods, including surveys, interviews and classroom observations, to gather qualitative data from various stakeholders (teachers, students and parents).

The findings from the study of the BYOD project inform of digital divide issues in the context of evolving teaching and learning practices across formal and informal spaces. The authors explored how the BYOD policy has influenced existing divides in the learning process across three levels, namely, digital access, digital capability and digital outcome. The result sheds light on key issues affecting the learning process to contextualise factors in the three-level digital divide for the BYOD technology adoption process in classroom settings.

The study presents findings from an ongoing investigation of one secondary school, an early adopter of the BYOD policy. While the authors have followed the school for three years, more in-depth studies on how teaching and learning practices are evolving across formal and informal spaces will be further qualified in the next stages of data collection.

The study contributes to new knowledge on how digital inclusion can be supported beyond mere access to meaningful use of technology to reinforce student learning and their overall skill development.

This study aims to systematize and critically analyse existing indices and frameworks on digital capabilities with the focus on consumers’ digital capabilities, identify opportunities for their further development and suggest agenda for future research.

A sample of 18 frameworks and indices of consumers’ digital capabilities were compared based on their purposes, stakeholders, scope and application areas.

The study concludes with propositions that generalise current views on conceptualisation, measurement and management of consumers’ digital capabilities. Each proposition is further investigated in terms of possible implications for research and practice.

The study indicates opportunities for businesses not only to consider consumers as recipients and adopters of digital technologies but also to aim to understand how to proactively involve consumers in value co-creation, help them be better educated and have a comprehensive understanding of potential outcomes of their participation in the digital economy.

Highlighting individual consumer perspective in existing indices and frameworks will help consider the interests of society and provide win-win opportunities for everyone involved in the digital marketplace through bottom-up engagement in addition to top-down regulation and monitoring.

This study contributes to the extant literature threefold: firstly, existing digital capability frameworks and indices are systematized and critically investigated using criteria of stakeholders, purpose and aims; secondly, consumers are identified as principal stakeholder group whose interests are insufficiently presented in existing indices; thirdly, an integrative approach is suggested for a crucial comparison of existing indices, frameworks and their methodology with the focus on consumers’ interests.

The purpose of this paper is to seek answers to questions on how equity of information literacy and learning outcomes have evolved with the ongoing advances in technologies in teaching and learning across schools. The authors’ report on a five-year long bring your own device (BYOD) journey of one school, which was one of the earliest adopters of one-to-one learning devices in New Zealand.

Using a socio-cultural ecological lens for analysis, a longitudinal study has investigated aspects of how digital/information literacy, computer self-efficacy, and nature of technology usage are transforming school and classroom curriculum practices.

Findings of this study reveal a significant shift in social and academic boundaries between formal and informal learning spaces. One-to-one learning devices provide the link between school and home, as students take more ownership of their learning, and teachers become facilitators. Curricula changes and proper technological support systems introduced in the school structures have given agency to students resulting in greater acceptance of the BYOD policy and extensions to learning beyond formal classroom spaces. Digital divide amongst learners has evolved beyond equity in access and equity in capabilities to become more inclusive, thereby paving the way for equity in learning outcomes.

This study has been conducted in a school which is located in a relatively high socio-economic region. To achieve a more holistic view, there is a need for further studies to be conducted in schools from low socio-economic communities.

This paper adds to the existing literature by sharing teacher reflections on their use of innovative pedagogies to bring changes to classroom curricular practice.

This paper makes a significant contribution to the growing field of digital inequality research by developing an operational definition of emotional costs. To examine this understudied aspect of digital inequalities, we build on Van Dijk’s concept of mental access. We define emotional costs as anxiety toward using information and communication technologies instigated by a lack of prior technology experience and limited computer access.

We examined the influence of emotional costs on lower-income students’ technology efficacy, academic efficacy, and computer application proficiency in the context of a computing intervention. Specifically, we examined the relationship between home and school computer usage with self-perceived technology efficacy, computer application proficiency, and academic efficacy. Data from surveys of 972 students were analyzed in order to better understand the importance of technology access on our outcome variables. We also investigated the possible mediation effects of emotional costs on our outcome variables.

The results revealed that home computer usage was a determinant of students’ self-perceived technology efficacy while shared school access was not. After conducting mediation tests, the results further indicated that emotional costs mediate the effects of home computer usage on technology efficacy.

We conclude that emotional costs might help explain why access inequalities lead to skill inequalities in the context of computing interventions and offer a replicable operational definition for future studies.

Existing researches find that a gender difference exists in terms of Internet usage. In China, the singleton daughters resulting from China's one-child policy enjoy unprecedented parental support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether singleton daughters can, to some extent, break through the predicament of the digital divide.

The study collected data from a sample of 865 college students and obtained 811 valid questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used to identify clusters of Internet usage from the perspective of statistical associations in various daily online activities. Two-way ANOVA and mean-comparison tests are used to analyze how singleton and non-singleton students use the Internet differently.

This study finds that singleton female students showed no significant differences from male students in aspirational activities of informational, educational use and social media use, which means that singleton female students have caught up with male students in these activities. However, female college students from multi-child families were still found to be disadvantaged in those activities.

There is a lack of consensus on the classification of Internet activities. We used EFA to cluster the varieties of Internet activities into three types: utilitarian use, exploratory use and aspirational use. The three identified types of Internet usage require different degrees of user initiative. We argue that initiative provides a useful lens through which to classify Internet usage. In addition, this study is among the few studies to investigate the impact of the one-child policy on the gender digital divide.

The objective of this study is to ascertain the financial literacy (FL) of the farmers in three South Asian economies (India, Bangladesh and Pakistan). Further, an effort was made to explore various demographic and socioeconomic antecedents of FL of the farmers.

The study used secondary data of 11,025, 782 and 657 farmers from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively from Financial Inclusion Insights (2017) database. “Big five” FL questions were used to measure the FL of the farmers. Appropriate statistical techniques and censored Tobit regression were used to identify the determinants of such FL.

Bangladeshi farmers (48.75%: Moderate) were found to exhibit greater FL as compared to Pakistani (38.96%: Poor) and Indian (32.61%: Poor) farmers. The outcome of the study revealed that the farm ownership and educational attainment of the farmers significantly determined FL of the farmers in all three Asian countries. Financial confidence and gender were observed to exacerbate a positive influence on the level of FL of farmers belonging to India and Pakistan. Age, marital status, financial inclusion and economic status were found to be the major determinants of FL of Indian farmers.

There is a dearth of studies in the scholarship examining the FL of farmers in both developed and developing economies. The present study makes an original contribution to the literature by unearthing FL amongst farmers and its determinants in three South Asian economies using a large sample of 12,464 farmers for the first time.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0776