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This study aims to statistically verify the links of income and education with information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion across 191 countries of the world taking into account a total of 9 indicators best representing the socio-economic variables.

Multivariate regression analysis was used as a prime method to rigorously test the relationships of income and education with ICT diffusion across 191 countries. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (V. 22) was used to analyze and predict patterns in the data.

The results support the hypotheses that income and education are positively related to ICT diffusion. The findings statistically confirm that poverty is a leading cause of digital divide worldwide.

Academic, policy and practice groups should work in collaboration to fight against digital divide. Present results also imply that digital divide shall never end but rather it can be controlled to an extent with multiple collaborative efforts.

Prior research assignments on the digital divide concentrate on exploring the links between few socio-economic and ICT variables in select few regions theoretically. The present work addresses this literature gap by developing and testing two hypotheses to statistically investigate the relationships between a broad set of socio-economic and ICT indicators.

Technology access, digital skills, and digital services are increasingly prerequisites for public life and accessing public services. The digital divide in contemporary societies matters for efforts to digitalize the welfare state. Research has already mapped individual determinants of digital exclusion and the existence of an age-related digital divide. However, far less attention has been paid to variations in digital inclusion between countries and to their potential explanations related to political systems. This study explores the influence of variations in welfare regimes on the digital divide among seniors (aged 65+) in Europe.

This article presents time-series cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors in European countries. The analyses are based on data from Eurostat, the World Bank, and the UN E-Government Survey.

The authors find extensive variation in the digital inclusion of citizens between welfare regimes and argue that considering regime differences improves the understanding of these variations. The findings indicate that the age-related digital divide seems to be least evident in countries with more universalistic welfare regimes and most evident in countries where seniors rely more on their families.

This is the first comparative study of the association between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence-based policy recommendations for improving the implementation of universal service funds (USF) with a view to closing the digital divide in Africa.

The paper adopts a qualitative approach that draws examples from various African countries supported by 25 interviews from key stakeholders with hands-on experience and roles that shape telecommunications policy in Africa and other developing countries.

The study's findings point out that institutional voids which characterize several African countries inhibit the effectiveness of USF in African countries. The authors identify several institutional and organisational factors and explain how they negatively affect the performance of USF. The authors find that in order to overcome these obstacles, there is a need for a clear redefinition of Universal Access and Service (UAS) policies, restructuring the governance of USF, encouraging cross-sectoral collaborations, and bottom-up initiatives to bridge the digital divide in African countries.

The paper contributes to the underexplored USF literature by shedding light on the role of institutional factors in determining the success of USF. The paper thus complements and provides a different perspective on promoting digital inclusion in Africa from the viewpoint of institutional voids, bringing new insights into the existing literature on how to deal with an intractable area of UAS policy and the wider digital divide debate in developing countries.

This paper aims to make a modest attempt to classify the Asia-Pacific countries in terms of the access to information and communication technology (ICT) to unearth the prevalence of digital divide (if any) in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to that, this paper also examines the role played by the digital skill in bridging the digital divide in the context of Asia–Pacific countries.

Secondary data on 43 Asia-Pacific countries for the period from 2012 to 2017 was collected from International Telecommunication Union (ITU) database and World Development Indicators, World Bank. K-means clustering technique was applied to explore the natural grouping of the Asia-Pacific countries based on ICT access. The role of digital/ICT skill in narrowing the access-based digital divide was investigated using panel data regression technique.

Clustering of countries suggested a significant difference amongst the Asia-Pacific countries in terms of ICT access, signifying the prevalence of access based digital divide. Digital skill played pivotal role in promoting ICT access and thereby reducing the digital divide during the period of the study. Per capita income level, level of education, openness of the economy and urbanisation were observed to be the determining factors in reducing the digital divide during the period of study in the Asia-Pacific region.

The study makes an unique attempt to explore the role of digital/ICT skill in tapering the access-based digital divide in the context of Asia-Pacific region.

The purpose of this paper is to create a research framework to scrutinize how individuals' digital technology use produces tangible and intangible outcomes in online (digital) and offline realms.

The paper applies the Bourdieusian e-capital perspective to create a theory-based framework. The framework was used to guide a survey design to explore women's “social media-assisted reuse” at the micro-scale in Helsinki, Finland.

The paper argues that a new form of capital emerges when individuals utilize digital technologies in correspondence to their goals to gain added value that would be impossible or significantly more arduous to gain without the digital realm. The survey indicates that the respondents utilize the digital space – set objectives and gain capital-related outcomes – in correspondence to their differing social, economic and cultural positions and related resources in- and outside of the digital realm.

If digital spaces – due to social inequality and underlying power structures – become increasingly stratified, there will be significant impacts on how individuals from differing backgrounds gain accumulated forms of capital through the digital realm. The question is of great importance for battling inequality.

The paper enhances and synthesizes recent discussions on different forms of capital and outcomes of the use of digital technologies and presents a combined “e-capital–digital divide” framework that offers a more complete agenda for investigating the finely nuanced links between the inputs, outputs and outcomes of digital technology use.

China is the world’s largest user market for digital technologies and experiencing unprecedented rates of rural-urban migration set to create the world’s first “urban billion”. This is an important context for studying nuanced adoption behaviours that define a digital divide. Large-scale studies are required to determine what behaviours exist in such populations, but can offer limited ability to draw inferences about why. The purpose of this paper is to report a large-scale study inside China that probes a nuanced “digital divide” behaviour: consumer demographics indicating ability to pay by electronic means but behaviour suggesting lack of willingness to do so, and extends current demographics to help explain this.

The authors report trans-national access to commercial “Big Data” inside China capturing the demographics and consumption of millions of consumers across a wide range of physical and digital market channels. Focusing on one urban location we combine traditional demographics with a new measure that reflecting migration: “Distance from Home”, and use data-mining techniques to develop a model that predicts use behaviour.

Use behaviour is predictable. Most use is explained by value of the transaction. “Distance from Home” is more predictive of technology use than traditional demographics.

Results suggest traditional demographics are insufficient to explain “why” use/non-use occurs and hence an insufficient basis to formulate and target government policy.

The authors understand this to be the first large-scale trans-national study of use/non-use of digital channels within China, and the first study of the impact of distance on ICT adoption.

Digital inequality is considered one of the leading causes of socioeconomic disparities nowadays and a barrier to sustainable development. However, a dearth of empirical research has examined the impact of digital inequality in attaining sustainable development. This study aims to systematically review the scientific publications on the impact of digital inequality in achieving sustainable development.

The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA, 2020) guidelines were followed to carry out the systematic literature review (SLR) using Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest and Google Scholar electronic databases. Numerous inclusion/exclusion criteria were employed to obtain the most relevant literature. Finally, 54 articles were included to prepare the final database and qualitative synthesis was performed using 12 variables.

While the findings show that there has been a substantial expansion of scientific publications on the focused area in recent years, there is still a lack of empirical and comparative studies; less focus on the offline benefits of online activities were also demonstrated by the results. Moreover, SDGs 04 and 05 were identified as the predominant goals in the literature. Findings further highlighted the importance of an accurate conceptualization of digital inequality.

In general, this study investigates the level of impact of digital inequality on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, it shows the evolution of scientific publications on digital inequality in terms of its contribution when achieving sustainable development.

The advent of technology has enabled frequent innovations in the digital modes of doing business. While some users are reluctant to adopt one, others have made it their way of life. The purpose of this study is to find out the approximate time frame of a digital user in an emerging economy like India to adopt their favorite digital application. The importance of an individual’s level of internet skills is explored in the aspect of adopting digital innovations.

The study follows a quantitative approach where data collected from both primary and secondary sources are analyzed to arrive at the results. In total, 837 responses collected with the help of a structured questionnaire are entered and analyzed using SPSS. Multinomial logistic regression is the statistical tool used in the research.

Five sets of adopter categories based on Rogers (1983) are created using an adoption score and are represented in a Time Horizon to understand better. The Unaffected adopter category is used as the reference point to compare the set of internet skills against each of the other five categories. The five sets of categories comprising the internet skills depict interesting results in the case of all the four comparisons made. Social skills are not seen to have any influence on a user being an Innovator or Early Adopter as compared to an Unaffected user. It is also established that Operational and Creative skills play important role in users’ probability of being an innovator, early adopter and early majority compared to being unaffected.

The study analyzes the role of internet skills in the process of adopting digital innovations. The role of internet skill although is associated with every aspect of the digital revolution taking place all over, its application including the direct score of a digital user’s level of internet skills is not found in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) examine the current state of the digital economy in Southeast Asia (SEA), the challenges and opportunities derived from digital transformation and the digital economy, and the impact of the digital economy on SEA, especially human and physical capital development, and (b) propose policy recommendations for SEA countries to better manage digital transformation.

This is a conceptual paper. The theoretical framework has been built from the three-sector governance approach to identify the issues of the digital economy and propose solutions to address the issues. Specifically, it examines the role and activities of the public sector, the private sector and the third sector to address the challenges posed by the digital economy, especially human and physical capital development.

This paper revealed challenges and opportunities derived from the experience of Southeast Asian countries and proposed several policies recommendations, including a common data policy and payment platform for the Asian region, a good training and development policy to equip the workforce with digital skills, and digital mindset as well as build cybersecurity capability and capacity at the regional level.

This paper is significant as it examines the development of the digital economy from an interdisciplinary perspective – including economics, digitalisation, governance, management, public policy, technology and human resource development. It also provides better insights into how SEA's digital economic development can be further improved to contribute to a sustainable regional economy.