Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/202188 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Digital Economy Working Paper No. 2013/06
Publisher: 
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Seville
Abstract: 
This paper examines whether there is a digital divide in the use of the internet in general and for specific purposes (leisure, improving human capital and obtaining goods and services). It uses a unique dataset which covers the entire clickstream of almost 20,000 internet users in the five largest EU economies during 2011. Our main finding is that, for those who have access to the Internet, the income-based digital divide in internet use has been reversed. Low-income internet users spend more time on the internet than high-income users. In addition, we find that employment status does not change the effect of income on internet use and we discuss several possible explanations for this result. There is some evidence of an education-based digital divide in the use of human capital and goods & services websites. Tertiary education has a negative effect on time spent on leisure websites and a positive effect on time spent on human capital and goods & services websites. Using quantile regressions, we find that the negative effect of income and the positive effect of education for human capital and goods & services websites hold for the entire conditional distribution of these online activities. Moreover, these effects are stronger for more intensive internet users.
Subjects: 
Internet Use
Time allocation
Leisure
digital divide
JEL: 
L86
D12
D13
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-79-29822-6
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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