https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-024-00491-0
Research
Measuring corporate digital divide through websites: insights from Italian firms
1
European University Institute, Centre for a Digital Society/Robert Schuman Centre, Florence, Italy
2
IMT School of Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy
3
IUSS Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Received:
2
October
2023
Accepted:
19
July
2024
Published online:
30
July
2024
With the increasing pervasiveness of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the fabric of economic activities, the corporate digital divide has become a crucial issue for the assessment of Information Technology (IT) competencies and the digital gap between firms and territories. With little granular data available to measure the phenomenon, most studies have used survey data. To address this empirical gap, we scanned the homepages of 182,705 Italian companies and extracted ten characteristics related to their digital footprint to develop a new index for the corporate digital assessment. Our results show a significant digital divide between Italian companies according to size, sector and geographical location, opening new perspectives for monitoring and data-driven analysis.
Key words: Digital divide / Website data / Web mining / Corporate big data / Digital business capabilities / Digital transformation
© The Author(s) 2024
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