IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2301.04925.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Corporate Digital Divide with web scraping: Evidence from Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Mazzoni Leonardo
  • Pinelli Fabio
  • Riccaboni Massimo

Abstract

With the increasing pervasiveness of ICTs in the fabric of economic activities, the corporate digital divide has emerged as a new crucial topic to evaluate the IT competencies and the digital gap between firms and territories. Given the scarcity of available granular data to measure the phenomenon, most studies have used survey data. To bridge the empirical gap, we scrape the website homepage of 182 705 Italian firms, extracting ten features related to their digital footprint characteristics to develop a new corporate digital assessment index. Our results highlight a significant digital divide across dimensions, sectors and geographical locations of Italian firms, opening up new perspectives on monitoring and near-real-time data-driven analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Mazzoni Leonardo & Pinelli Fabio & Riccaboni Massimo, 2023. "Measuring Corporate Digital Divide with web scraping: Evidence from Italy," Papers 2301.04925, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2301.04925
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.04925
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ageeva, Elena & Melewar, T.C. & Foroudi, Pantea & Dennis, Charles & Jin, Zhongqi, 2018. "Examining the influence of corporate website favorability on corporate image and corporate reputation: Findings from fsQCA," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 287-304.
    2. Axenbeck, Janna & Breithaupt, Patrick, 2019. "Web-based innovation indicators: Which firm website characteristics relate to firm-level innovation activity?," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-063, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Antonelli, Cristiano, 2003. "The digital divide: understanding the economics of new information and communication technology in the global economy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 173-199, June.
    4. Birger Wernerfelt, 1984. "A resource‐based view of the firm," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 171-180, April.
    5. Sanjay K. Arora & Yin Li & Jan Youtie & Philip Shapira, 2016. "Using the wayback machine to mine websites in the social sciences: A methodological resource," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(8), pages 1904-1915, August.
    6. Jan Kinne & Janna Axenbeck, 2020. "Web mining for innovation ecosystem mapping: a framework and a large-scale pilot study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2011-2041, December.
    7. Forman, Chris & Goldfarb, Avi & Greenstein, Shane, 2005. "How did location affect adoption of the commercial Internet? Global village vs. urban leadership," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 389-420, November.
    8. Matthess, Marcel & Kunkel, Stefanie, 2020. "Structural change and digitalization in developing countries: Conceptually linking the two transformations," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    9. Li, Yin & Arora, Sanjay & Youtie, Jan & Shapira, Philip, 2018. "Using web mining to explore Triple Helix influences on growth in small and mid-size firms," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 76, pages 3-14.
    10. Indra Abeysekera, 2019. "How Best to Communicate Intangible Resources on Websites to Inform Corporate‐Growth Reputation of Small Entrepreneurial Businesses," Journal of Small Business Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(3), pages 738-756, July.
    11. Karol Król & Dariusz Zdonek, 2020. "Aggregated Indices in Website Quality Assessment," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-23, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rammer, Christian & Es-Sadki, Nordine, 2023. "Using big data for generating firm-level innovation indicators - a literature review," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    2. Bottai, Carlo & Crosato, Lisa & Domenech, Josep & Guerzoni, Marco & Liberati, Caterina, 2024. "Scraping innovativeness from corporate websites: Empirical evidence on Italian manufacturing SMEs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    3. Christoph Stich & Emmanouil Tranos & Max Nathan, 2023. "Modeling clusters from the ground up: A web data approach," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(1), pages 244-267, January.
    4. Schubert, Torben & Ashouri, Sajad & Deschryvere, Matthias & Jäger, Angela & Visentin, Fabiana & Cunningham, Scott & Hajikhani, Arash & Pukelis, Lukas & Suominen, Arho, 2023. "The role of product digitization for productivity," MERIT Working Papers 2023-004, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    5. Ashouri, Sajad & Hajikhani, Arash & Suominen, Arho & Pukelis, Lukas & Cunningham, Scott W., 2024. "Measuring digitalization at scale using web scraped data," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    6. Chwiłkowska-Kubala, Anna & Cyfert, Szymon & Malewska, Kamila & Mierzejewska, Katarzyna & Szumowski, Witold, 2023. "The impact of resources on digital transformation in energy sector companies. The role of readiness for digital transformation," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. Charles Hoffreumon & Chris Forman & Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2024. "Make or buy your artificial intelligence? Complementarities in technology sourcing," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 452-479, March.
    8. Witold Nowiński & Wanda Nowara, 2011. "Stopień i uwarunkowania internacjonalizacji polskich małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 29-45.
    9. Gregorio Rius-Sorolla & Sofía Estelles-Miguel & Carlos Rueda-Armengot, 2020. "Multivariable Supplier Segmentation in Sustainable Supply Chain Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-16, June.
    10. Peter E. Harland & Zakir Uddin & Sven Laudien, 2020. "Product platforms as a lever of competitive advantage on a company-wide level: a resource management perspective," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 137-158, February.
    11. Marco Valeri & Rodolfo Baggio, 2021. "A critical reflection on the adoption of blockchain in tourism," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 121-132, June.
    12. Arie Y Lewin & Silvia Massini & Carine Peeters, 2020. "Absorptive capacity, socially enabling mechanisms, and the role of learning from trial and error experiments: A tribute to Dan Levinthal’s contribution to international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(9), pages 1568-1579, December.
    13. Claudio Vitari & Elisabetta Raguseo, 2016. "Digital data, dynamic capability and financial performance: an empirical investigation in the era of Big Data," Post-Print halshs-01923271, HAL.
    14. David G. Sirmon & Michael A. Hitt, 2003. "Managing Resources: Linking Unique Resources, Management, and Wealth Creation in Family Firms," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 27(4), pages 339-358, October.
    15. Kim, Yeonshin & Hur, Won-Moo & Lee, Luri, 2023. "Understanding customer participation in CSR activities: The impact of perceptions of CSR, affective commitment, brand equity, and corporate reputation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Nils Grashof, 2020. "Sinking or swimming in the cluster labour pool? A firm-specific analysis of the effect of specialized labour," Jena Economics Research Papers 2020-006, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    17. Cannavale, Chiara & Esempio, Anna & Ferretti, Marco, 2021. "Up- and down- alliances: A systematic literature review," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(5).
    18. Catherine Wanjiru Gathitu & Elegwa Mukulu & John Kihoro, 2021. "The influence of credit on the growth of YEDF- funded group-based enterprises in Nairobi County, Kenya," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 183-194, March.
    19. Jim Andersén, 2023. "Green resource orchestration: A critical appraisal of the use of resource orchestration in environmental management research, and a research agenda for future study," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(8), pages 5506-5520, December.
    20. Arora, Ashish & Forman, Chris & Nandkumar, Anand & Telang, Rahul, 2010. "Competition and patching of security vulnerabilities: An empirical analysis," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 164-177, May.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:arx:papers:2301.04925. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.