IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/prbchp/978-3-030-39927-6_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

A Hierarchical Analysis of Internet Adoption and Usage by the Seniors

In: Economic and Financial Challenges for Balkan and Eastern European Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Elias Gounopoulos

    (University of Western Macedonia)

  • Ioannis Kazanidis

    (International Hellenic University)

  • Stavros Valsamidis

    (International Hellenic University)

  • Sotirios Kontogiannis

    (University of Ioannina)

Abstract

The seniors are a large socially vulnerable population group in Greece, and the Internet can help them improve their quality of life. However, they do not take advantage of the technology and prefer to stay offline. Our study examined Internet adoption, usage and the digital skills of seniors in Greece. We analysed the micro-data of the annual national survey on the use of ICT by Greek households for the year 2015. We conducted hierarchical regressions to assess in three stages the influence of the socioeconomic factors to: (a) the decision of the seniors to access and use the Internet, (b) the extent and frequency of Internet use and (c) seniors’ digital skills. According to the results, social inequalities are important determinants of seniors’ decision to access and use the Internet. The seniors’ educational level and gender are very important factors leading to an accumulated advantage, since older men and well-educated seniors use more extensively the Internet and are more digitally skilled. This work emphasizes the need not to treat the elderly as a single group. The Greek state should implement smart policies to address the seniors’ digital divide, highlighting the benefits and promoting the technology with training seminars.

Suggested Citation

  • Elias Gounopoulos & Ioannis Kazanidis & Stavros Valsamidis & Sotirios Kontogiannis, 2020. "A Hierarchical Analysis of Internet Adoption and Usage by the Seniors," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Marietta Janowicz-Lomott & Krzysztof Łyskawa & Persefoni Polychronidou & Anastasios Karasavvoglou (ed.), Economic and Financial Challenges for Balkan and Eastern European Countries, pages 273-289, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-030-39927-6_17
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-39927-6_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-030-39927-6_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.