The impact of Internet Diffusion among Italian Firms

The digital divide can occur either as a "local" (within a given country) or a "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 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 a 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 Italian regions that have good productive efficiency measured of the added value per employee and a high educational level measured by the number of firms specialized in the ICT service sale (Internet Service Provider) and by number of employees devoted to research and development are the best candidates for the utilization of Internet.