Has the Digital Divide Been Reversed? Evidence from Five EU Countries

Disentangling income and price effects in the demand for time online

“…For Europe, the same pattern has been reported by Hadhri et al (2012) and Pantea and Martens (2014), which led the latter to wonder whether the "digital divide" had been reversed. In the same vein, Orviska and Hudson (2009) report a negative effect of income on the probability of using several internet applications.…”

“…Thus, according to this interpretation, the inverse relationship between income and time spent online observed among users would be the result of a negative own-price effect created by cross-people variation in the income they could earn in the labor market. But Pantea and Martens (2014) have cast doubt on this interpretation finding that the effect of income on time spent online among employed users (whose opportunity cost of time is more likely to be related to wages and hence income), is virtually the same as the effect observed among nonemployed users.…”

The Value of the Internet as Entertainment in Five European Countries

“…In line with previous studies (Goldfarb & Prince, 2008;Pantea & Martens, 2014), we assume that preferences for the internet good relative to the composite good depend on users' gender, age, marital status, household size, 14 education, occupation, and region of residence. Table 5 presents the definition of these variables and their descriptive statistics.…”

“…One concern is that high income and low income consumers may differ systematically in their preferences for the internet good, which would lead to biased estimates of σ. There is some empirical evidence that this might be the case (Goldfarb & Prince, 2008;Pantea & Martens, 2014). We address this potential problem by allowing the internet users' preferences for the internet good relative to the composite good to depend on their occupation and education.…”

“…9 We consider leisure websites to be of the following types (based on the Nielsen classification): 10 entertainment (adult, digital arts and graphics, books and magazines, broadcast media, events, gambling and sweepstakes, humour, comics and novelties, multicategory entertainment, music, online games, sports and videos and movies), family and lifestyle (family resources, genealogy, kids, games and toys, multicategory family lifestyle, personals, pets and animal care, religion and spirituality), news and information, social networks (member communities and targeted member communities), and telecom and internet services (email, instant messaging, long distance and local telephone carriers and internet tools, which include popular illegal downloading websites). 11 This definition has been used by Pantea and Martens (2014) and it is similar to the definition used in the McKinsey study (IAB Europe, 2010;Bughin, 2011).…”