“…DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman and Robinson (2001) highlight the potential of internet access disparity to restrict opportunities in education, government information access, political participation and social networks, favoring its use as a digitalization measure. However, internet access can be measured in several ways, including individual internet usage (Maji & Laha, 2022;Myovella et al, 2021), fixed broadband subscriptions (Maji & Laha, 2022;Myovella et al, 2021), digital economy and society indices (Boikova, Zeverte-Rivza, Rivza, & Rivza, 2021) and network readiness indices (Tudose, Georgescu, & Avasilc ai, 2023). While acknowledging the limitations of accessing the latter two indices, this study primarily uses the percentage of internet users as a main dependent variable for digitalization.…”