Abstract:

This article investigates the reasons for the e-access and e-skills divides. The research questions are: What factors contribute to explain the e-access and the e-skills? In what way do socio-economic, demographic, cultural, and political factors explain the digital divide? In order to answer these questions, two studies were conducted: one at the individual level and one at the country level. Based on data collected from 330 Lebanese potential users of public e-services, the individual-level study measures the impacts of income, education level, and occupation disparities on the e-access and e-skills divides. It also measures the impacts of gender, religious, regional, and generational differences on the digital divide. The second study compares 86 countries based on several factors: economic (measured by GDP per capita), socio-demographic (human development index), cultural (disparities between genders), and political (democracy index). In order to isolate the context-specific factors, we also compare these results to those of the Arab World (21 countries). By comparing the micro with the macro level of analysis, this paper proposes a novel point of view that can measure the individual impacts on the macro and the macro impacts on the individual.