Authors:
Maurizio Martinelli
;
Irma Serrecchia
and
Michela Serrecchia
Affiliation:
Institute for Informatics and Telematics – Italian National Research Council (IIT-CNR), Italy
Keyword(s):
Internet Diffusion, Digital Divide, Domain names.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Case Studies
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
e-Procurement and Web-Based Supply Chain Management
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Neural Rehabilitation
;
Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics
;
Process Design and Organisational Issues in E-Commerce
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Simulation Tools and Platforms
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
Abstract:
The digital divide can occur either as a “local” (within a given country) or “global” (between developing and industrialized countries) phenomenon. Our study intends to offer an important contribution by analyzing the digital divide in Italy and the factors contributing to this situation at the territorial level (i.e., macroareas: North, Center, South and at the provincial level) To do this, we used the registration of Internet domains under the “.it” ccTLD as proxy. In particular, we analyzed domain names registered by firms. The analysis produced interesting results: the distribution of domains registered by firms in Italian provinces is more concentrated than the distribution according to income and number of firms, suggesting a diffusive effect. Furthermore, when analyzing the factors that contribute to the presence of a digital divide at the regional level, regression analysis was performed using demographic, social, economic and infrastructure indicators. Results show that Ital
ian regions that have good productive efficiency measured by added value per employee and a high educational level measured by number of firms specialized in the ICT service sale (provider/maintainer) and by number of employees devoted to research and development are the best candidates for utilization of the Internet.
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