Determinants of Digital Divide among Italian provinces. Generational and Gender Digital Divide in Italy

The analysis of the diffusion of the Internet, taking into account different social and cultural activities, and different political fields, highlights the existence of the "Digital Divide", this is the digital gap among those having material and cultural resources to exploit the new technologies and those that do not, or that do not have the ability to adapt to the rapid changes that characterize the Internet today. Many researchers have acknowledged that the differences concerning Internet use among countries are fundamentally related to economic variables such as Internet access costs and per capita income. Starting from these argumentations, the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the National Research Council of Pisa (IIT-CNR) has decided to analyze the diffusion of the Internet among individuals and compare the respective penetration rates at a geographical level. This in order to verify the possible presence of a Digital Divide in Italy and analyze the factors that determine it, taking into consideration not only economic variables but also, demographic, technological variables.