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This paper according to the logic of the “digital access divide--digital capability divide--digital outcome divide” aims to systematically discuss the impact of the digital divide on individual happiness in China, accounting for the variations that exist across different groups, as well as the corresponding mechanisms.

This paper presents cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between the digital divide and individual happiness in China. The analyses are based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2017, which academic institutions run on the Chinese Mainland. This database contains information on respondents' Internet access, skills and consequences of use, which can measure the digital divide of Chinese individuals at three levels.

First, individual happiness declined when they experienced the digital access divide in China. For the digital capability divide, the lower the usage skills, the more individual happiness declined. When analyzing the digital outcome divide, the greater the negative consequences, the more individual happiness declined. Second, the impacts of digital access, capability and outcome divide vary according to age, gender, education degrees, hukou, region and sub-dimensions. Third, the digital access and capability divide reduce individuals' happiness by lowering their self-rated social and economic status, whereas the digital outcome divide reduce individual happiness by lowering their fairness perception and social trust.

The authors believe that this is the first study to examine the impact and its variations among different groups of the three-level digital divide on individual happiness, as well as its mechanisms.

With the aid of bibliometric analysis, this study aims to show the state-of-the-art of research on the digital divide and identifies new areas for further investigation.

Performance analysis and science mapping were used in the study to analyse a sample of 3,571 studies that were published between 2018 and 2022. The “Title-Keyword-Abstract” search option was used to collect the anticipated publications data from the Scopus database. The gathered data were analysed using the common bibliometric indices to evaluate the research landscape. The science mapping tactics made use of the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software.

The performance and science mapping analysis shows that recent research on the digital divide has not been sufficiently exposed and examined. The analysis discovered emerging topics, prolific authors and nations, affiliations, a network of collaboration among authors, countries and institutions, bibliographic coupling and keyword co-occurrence.

This work presents a state-of-the-art that has significant theoretical and practical ramifications for the existing digital divide literature. The methodologies and database used in the current study are more extensive.

In light of the shift in focus from information communication technology (ICT) access (access divide) and skills (skills divide) to the tangible impacts of ICT use (impact divide), a growing number of scholars have called for further investigation into the inter-territorial and multi-dimensional aspects of the digital divide in China. This study aims to address these gaps by examining the disparities across 31 provinces, particularly emphasizing the transition from the traditional access and skills divides to the impact divide.

Multivariate regression analysis extensively investigates the transition from the access and skills divides to the impact divide across 31 provinces. Additionally, ArcGIS software is used to analyze spatial agglomeration and the auto-correlation (Moran-i) and predict mapping patterns in the data corresponding to all three levels of the digital divide.

According to the study's findings, poverty is a significant factor in the digital divide between different regions in China. The research shows that provinces with advanced administrative systems, such as Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandon and Zhejiang, have high scores on the digital development index (DDI). However, regions with poverty-ridden and rural areas, primarily located in southwest, central and western China, tend to have lower DDI scores.

This study offers a novel contribution to the literature by presenting an innovative conceptual framework that explores the impact divide within China's provinces. The authors also address this lacuna in the literature by developing and testing two dimensions to examine the relationships statistically under a wide range of socioeconomic and ICT indicators.

This study aims to examine the research output on digital divide from 2001 to 2020 and measure the qualitative and quantitative growth of literature during the stated period by using required bibliometric measures for identifying the types of documents, yearly growth, country productivity, citation network of collaborative countries, authorship pattern, top authors, cocitation networks and assorted facets.

Web of Science database was used to retrieve the required data for this study. Keeping the objectives of this study in mind, the keyword “Digital Divide” was used as the search term. Moreover, the retrieved data were limited from the year 2001 to 2020 for two decades. A total of 5,518 publications were filtered and focused for subsequent facet-wise analysis and interpretation. Required bibliometric indicators like types of documents, yearly growth, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration (DC), country productivity, h-index and citation impact were used to study various dimensions of publication trends. VOSviewer software was used to visualize the authorship network, bibliographic coupling and keyword occurrences.

This study finds a total of 5,518 publications on the topic digital divide contributed by 14,277 authors from 130 countries across the world published through 2,843 source titles in 13 global languages during the past two decades (2001–2020). The annual growth of publications (AGP) on the topic digital divide shows 38.43% AGP globally. Journal articles have been identified as the preferred type of document with 73.11% of the literature. The DC indicates a healthy trend of collaborative research with a mean value of 0.70. The USA is the table topper with the contribution of 1,933(35.03%) publications and 77 h-index and James J., from Tilburg University, The Netherlands, is identified as top amongst the most productive authors with the highest number of 34 publications (h-index 14).

This study restricts its scope on research productivity to the theme “digital divide” regarding authorship pattern, DC, most productive authors, most productive countries, most published sources and other key facets. This study exclusively refers to the Web of Science database in retrieving the required data. Moreover, this study takes global research into account with no geographical or language limitations and comprehends literature on digital divide for two decades ranging from the years 2001 to 2020.

Teachers and research scholars interested in bibliometric studies can benefit from insights into the scholarly documents published on the topic digital divide from 2001 to 2020.

This study yields some interesting findings on published literature on the digital divide during the past two decades relating to the most striking contributions, highly cited journals, the most prolific authors, country productivity, keyword cooccurrence and assorted parameters.

This study acknowledges the existing digital divide in India, particularly for marginalised populations, and highlights the need for exceptional attention to address their unique needs, challenges and demands. Although previous research and policies have primarily focused on physical access and internet skills, this study shifts the focus to the outcomes of internet use. By understanding how older adults in marginalised communities incorporate the internet into their daily routines, this study aims to contribute to the development of an operational framework that charts the disadvantages of the digital divide.

The study draws from Helsper’s (2015) internet outcomes framework to identify the outcomes that older adults can derive from being online. By using a qualitative approach, the study seeks to understand how educational and economic backgrounds influence internet usage among older adults and how this can promote advantageous internet use.

The findings indicate that highly educated individuals are more likely to experience positive outcomes across various societal domains than their less educated counterparts. However, it was observed that the highly educated participants also try to limit the impact of internet use on their personal lives by intentionally disconnecting from the internet whenever possible.

By offering programmes and interventions to encourage internet use and improve digital skills, as well as by enhancing digital accessibility and incentive systems, the government should go forward with its plan to close the outcomes gap in internet use among older adults. For policymakers, it turns the spotlight on creating an environment conducive to the digital inclusion of older adults, consistent with sociocultural structures.

This study contributes to understanding the nuanced dynamics of internet use among older adults, shedding light on the role of educational background and sociocultural factors in shaping internet outcomes. It highlights the need to consider qualitative approaches in digital inequality research to capture the complexities underlying the digital divide.

Digital technologies (DTs) are key and essential in firms and communities. Countries in low-income areas, such as Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) contexts, struggle with digital development. To understand how firms in BOP countries access DTs, a qualitative study was conducted to provide insight into how firms in these contexts access DTs and the challenges they face while accessing these technologies.

An in-depth qualitative study was done, which included semi-structured interviews with digital enterprises. In total, 12 chief executive officers (CEOs) and owners of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) from Ghana and Nigeria were interviewed. NVivo 12 Pro was used for thematic analysis.

Four main findings were identified as follows: (1) how firms in BOP contexts access DTs, (2) the challenges in accessing DTs, (3) factors considered when selecting a technological provider in BOP contexts and (4) solutions and recommendations to the challenges identified. From the results, cost, low technological infrastructure, high transaction costs, regulatory issues, lack of trust, poor digital skills and lack of support were among the barriers to accessing DTs in BOP contexts.

Governments and stakeholders of firms in BOP contexts need to be intentional with their digitalization development to ensure digital inclusion.

The study developed a synopsis of the factors involved in accessing DTs in BOP contexts and is the first to conceptualize firm digital access in BOP contexts.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2023-0213

This study firstly aims to prepare a hierarchical structure of the barriers contributing to digital exclusion of women. Secondly, the study aims to understand the inter-relationship of the barriers by converting them into a cyclic flow.

Systematic review was conducted through Web of Science and EBSCO Host Discovery Services with keywords: “digital divide” OR “digital gap” OR “digital inequality” OR “online difference” AND gender AND wom?n AND factors OR “demographic factors” OR “socio-economic” OR determinants OR reasons OR causes OR influences. Review was conducted of articles published in English language after 2012. Systematic literature review was conducted in line with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Framework 2020. Authors reviewed 21 reports.

This research found absence of education as the root of digital exclusion of women in the hierarchy of barriers. The cyclic flow of barriers displayed that how ill education of women lead to financial and psychological dependence of women on men, creating a hurdle in women empowerment. To break the cycle of digital exclusion, women education is must not only on primary basis but their tertiary education is important too.

This study makes an important contribution by ranking those barriers in a pyramid hierarchy and depicting their inter relation by framing a cyclic structure. This study provides suggestions to remove those barriers and ultimately break their chain to provide digital inclusive society for women.

This study aims to explore the relationship between elderly users' trust in public digital cultural services (PDCS) and their intention to use PDCS, and reveal the factors affecting their intentions from the perspective of trust to make recommendations that will increase their intention to use PDCS.

Combined with the trust building model and social exchange theory, this study constructed a conceptual model of elderly users' intention to use PDCS. Data collected from Chinese elderly users who have reached the age of 60 through questionnaire surveys were tested using the structural equation model with partial least squares. Finally, the authors proposed a model of elderly users' intention to use PDCS.

This study finds that elderly users' trust positively affects their intention to use PDCS from two aspects: service features and user features of PDCS. Concerning the service features, system quality directly affects elderly users' trust in PDCS most significantly, followed by information quality and service reputation. Concerning the user features, perceived value has a higher impact on elderly users' trust than that of service features, and information literacy and information quality directly affect perceived value.

This study adds new knowledge to the users' behavior of PDCS and enriches the prior description of PDCS. The recommendations made in this study provide a series of strategies for practitioners and researchers to improve the elderly users' intention to use PDCS and bridge the silver digital divide, which offers new ideas for improving the efficiency of PDCS.

In today’s information and knowledge society, it is indispensable for citizens to acquire the requisite digital and information literacy (IL) skills to search information independently to meet their multiple and diverse information needs. As a result of digitalisation in the world, development and acquisition of digital and information skills is critical even for students and learners to retrieve digitised and online information to meet or achieve their curriculum-related accomplishments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of the digital and information literacies in South Africa from 2016 to 2022.

This qualitative study used a scoping review approach to collect data from research articles, conference articles and textbooks on digital literacy and IL – published in the years ranging between 2016 and 2022 from Google Scholar.

The major findings revealed that majority of the citizens especially students and learners lack digital and IL skills to recognise when information is needed, to find, locate, evaluate and use the retrieved information to meet an information need in a particular situation or context. Practical implications of this study include the alignment of curricula towards information and communication technologies to face the everchanging digital information technologies.

The study used scoping literature review research where empirical studies were retrieved and selected to address the objectives. This study provided significant approaches regarding promoting information and digital literacies in developing countries such as South Africa.

The main purpose of this study is to test for the interaction effect of digital literacy in the relationship between financial technologies (FinTechs) of biometrics and mobile money and digital financial inclusion among the unbanked poor women, youth and persons with disabilities (PWDs) in rural Uganda.

Covariance-based structural equation modeling was used to construct the interaction effect using data collected from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs located in the four regions in Uganda as prescribed by Hair et al. (2022).

The findings from this study are threefold: first; the results revealed a positive interaction effect of digital literacy between FinTechs of biometrics and mobile money and digital financial inclusion. Second; the results also confirmed that biometrics identification positively promotes digital financial inclusion. Lastly; the results showed that mobile money positively promotes digital financial inclusion. A combination of FinTechs of biometrics and mobile money together with digital literacy explain 29% variation in digital financial inclusion among the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs in rural Uganda.

The data for this study were collected mainly from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs. Further studies may look at data from other sections of the vulnerable population in under developed financial markets. Additionally, the data for this study were collected only from Uganda as a developing country. Thus, more data may be obtained from other developing countries to draw conclusive and generalized empirical evidence. Besides, the current study used cross sectional design to collect the data. Therefore, future studies may adopt longitudinal research design to investigate the impact of FinTechs on digital financial inclusion in the presence of digital literacy across different time range.

The governments in developing countries like Uganda should support women, youth, PWDs and other equally vulnerable groups, especially in the rural communities to understand and use FinTechs. This can be achieved through digital literacy that can help them to embrace digital financial services and competently navigate and perform digital transactions over digital platforms like mobile money without making errors. Besides, governments in developing countries like Uganda can use this finding to advocate for the design of appropriate digital infrastructures to reach remote areas and ensure “last mile connectivity for digital financial services' users.” The use of off-line solutions can complement the absence or loss of on-line network connectivity for biometrics and mobile money to close the huge digital divide gap in rural areas. This can scale-up access to and use of financial services by the unbanked rural population.

This paper sheds more light on the importance of digital literacy in the ever complex and dynamic global FinTech ecosystem in the presence of rampant cyber risks. To the best of the authors' knowledge, limited studies currently exist that integrate digital literacy as a moderator in the relationship between FinTechs and digital financial inclusion, especially among vulnerable groups in under-developed digital financial markets in developing countries. This is the novelty of the paper with data obtained from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs in rural Uganda.