ICT Penetration Research Articles

COP28 roadmap: Do ICT, education, and renewable energy consumption matter for environmental quality? Quantile evidence for emerging economies

Renewable energy consumption (REC) is not the only potent tool that can ameliorate the difficulties associated with rising CO2 emissions and ecological distortions. Besides, the role of ICT penetration and education on environmental quality cannot be overshadowed by their contributions to economic growth and improved human well-being. This study scrutinizes the effects of ICT, education, and REC on the ecological footprint (EF) and CO2 emissions in the IMF-selected emerging economies. The study utilizes three variables for the ICT index, computed through principal component analysis. The augmented mean group estimator results suggest that ICT, education, and REC reduce the EF, whereas FDI contributes significantly to environmental degradation. On the flip side, ICT reduces CO2 emissions and EF in both the medium and upper quantiles. It suggests that ICT penetration heals the environment and that a higher level of ICT consumption could be a panacea for sustainable development in emerging economies. The causality results show evidence of a feedback causality between economic growth, REC, and CO2 emissions. However, a unidirectional causality flows from economic growth and FDI to EF. Finally, to maximize the benefits associated with the positive effects of REC and ICT on environmental betterment, several renewable energy and ICT policies have been mentioned and discussed.

Breaking barriers, building resilience: Leveraging knowledge to mitigate energy vulnerability in Africa

Addressing energy vulnerability can unlock economic potential and create pathways for inclusive and sustainable development. Knowledge creation and use are essential components of efforts to promote sustainable energy access and support development goals. This paper scrutinizes the effect of knowledge on energy vulnerability in Africa. Using data from 27 countries from 2000 to 2019, findings from feasible generalized least squares, panel-corrected standard errors, and fixed-effects with Driscoll and Kraay (1998) standard errors demonstrate that the three components of knowledge creation and use (education quality, ICT penetration, and innovation) mitigate energy vulnerability in Africa. Moreover, findings from the quantile regression confirm that the effect of knowledge is negative but heterogeneous across the conditional distribution of energy vulnerability. Finally, economic globalization incurs energy vulnerability, while urbanization has a negative and statistically significant effect. Thus, policymakers and governments should actively invest in education and training programs and provide incentives for ICT development and energy innovation to alleviate energy vulnerability in Africa.

ICT penetration and life expectancy in emerging market economies: panel evidence from asymmetric causality analysis

BackgroundLife expectancy is a significant result indicator of public health and sustainable development. Therefore, one of the final objectives of all economic and social policies is to increase the life expectancy. In this context, a limited number of researchers have investigated the relationship between ICT penetration and life expectancy. However, multiple interaction channels exist between ICT penetration and life expectancy. Furthermore, the studies have usually focused on the effect of ICT penetration on life expectancy through regression and ignored the effect of life expectancy on ICT penetration to a large extent. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the empirical literature by investigating the causal relationship between ICT indicators and life expectancy.MethodsThis study uses symmetric and asymmetric causality approaches to investigate the two-way interaction between ICT indicators and life expectancy in emerging market economies over the 1997–2020 period. Employment of the asymmetric causality test enables us to analyze the hidden relationships between ICT indicators and life expectancy, unlike the traditional causality test.ResultsThe results of the symmetric causality test uncover a bidirectional causal interaction between mobile subscriptions and life expectancy but a one-way causal relationship from life expectancy to internet usage. However, the asymmetric causality test results uncover a unidirectional causal relationship between mobile subscriptions and life expectancy in China, Colombia, Czechia, Egypt, Greece, India, Kuwait and Turkiye due to positive shocks from mobile subscriptions. On the other hand, a bidirectional causal interaction exists between internet usage and life expectancy in all countries due to negative shocks from internet usage and life expectancy. Last, a unidirectional causal relationship exists between internet usage and life expectancy in all countries due to positive shocks from internet usage.ConclusionICT indicators significantly influence life expectancy health in a sample of emerging market economies. Therefore, internet usage and mobile devices are significant tools to improve life expectancy.

Institutional quality, information and communication technologies and gender inclusion nexus: global comparative evidence

PurposeDespite the longstanding male dominance in the socio-politico-economic spheres, recent decades have witnessed remarkable improvements in gender inclusion. Although the issue of gender inclusion has been widely documented, answers to the question of whether institutional arrangements and information technology shape gender inclusion remain contentious. This study, therefore, empirically examines the effects of institutional quality and information and communication technology (ICT) penetration on gender inclusion on a global scale.Design/methodology/approachTo control for the endogeneity of modeled variables and cross-sectional dependence inherent with large panel datasets, the study employs the Driscoll-Kraay fixed effects (DKFE) and the system generalised method of moments (GMM) estimators for a panel of 142 countries from 1996 to 2020.FindingsThe empirical findings from the DKFE and system GMM estimators reveal that strong institutions significantly enhance gender inclusion. Moreover, by disaggregating institutional quality into various governance indicators, we show that besides corruption control, which has a positive but insignificant effect on women’s empowerment, other governance indicators significantly enhance gender inclusion. Furthermore, there is evidence that various ICT measures promote gender inclusion.Practical implicationsThe study results suggest that policymakers in developing countries should implement stringent measures to curb corruption. Moreover, policymakers in low-income countries should create avenues to facilitate women’s access to ICTs. Hence, policymakers in low-income countries should create and equip ICT training centers and render them accessible to all categories of women. Furthermore, developed countries with high-tech knowledge could help developing countries by organizing free training workshops and sensitization campaigns concerning the use of ICTs vis-à-vis women empowerment in various fields of life.Originality/valueThe present study fills a significant research gap by comprehensively exploring the nexuses between governance, ICT penetration and the socio-politico-economic dimensions of gender inclusion from a global perspective. Besides the paucity of studies in this regard, the few existing studies have been focused on either region and country-specific case studies in developed or developing economies. Moreover, this study is timely, given the importance placed on gender inclusion (SDG5), quality of institutions (SDG16) and ICT penetration (SDG9) in the 2015–2030 global development agenda.

Determining Digitalization Issues (ICT Adoption, Digital Literacy, and the Digital Divide) in Rural Areas by Using Sample Surveys: The Case of Armenia

Digital technologies have penetrated all spheres of human life, becoming an integral element of sustainable development, and rural areas and agriculture are no exception. However, the processes of digital transformation possess certain challenges. Among them are ICT penetration, digital literacy of society, and the digital divide. This article aims to evaluate the digital penetration and the digital divide in rural areas of Armenia and identify and propose directions for improvement. For that purpose, a sample survey was conducted among rural households. The questionnaires included questions aimed at assessing digital literacy, as well as the level of ICT penetration and use. In addition, the Digital Devices and Technologies Usage Index (DTUI) was composed and calculated. The comparison of DTUI values revealed that being distant from the capital Yerevan can negatively impact ICT usage and digital penetration. It was revealed that households with higher incomes tend to use more ICT, which can indicate a possible positive relationship between DTUI and can be further studied by integrating econometric regression analysis. To facilitate and accelerate the processes of digital penetration and ICT use in rural areas of Armenia, relevant proposals were presented in the scope of the article. The results of this article can be useful for policymakers and the results part can be relevant for wider audiences. In particular, the recommendations presented in the article can be used by the RA Government as practical state support measures aimed at the promotion of digitalization in rural areas. Further research can include the digitalization issues in urban areas and provide insights into the digital divide between urban and rural areas.

Institutional quality effect of ICT penetration: Global and regional perspectives

Institutional quality effect of ICT penetration: Global and regional perspectives

Nexus between macroeconomic factors and remittance inflow in presence of ICT penetration: a panel data analysis of Bangladesh economy

Nexus between macroeconomic factors and remittance inflow in presence of ICT penetration: a panel data analysis of Bangladesh economy

Informality and aggregate labor productivity growth: Does ICT moderate the relationship?

This paper attempts to understand whether digitization, measured in terms of ICT capital and penetration of the internet, helps reduce the negative impact of informality on labor productivity growth, especially in emerging & developing countries. Informality is argued to be a drag on productivity growth in emerging & developing countries. We argue that increased use of digital technologies can help informal sector reduce transaction and coordination costs; enhance the linkages between the informal and formal sectors; facilitate the integration of the informal sector in the global value chain; and also increase the potential for the formalization of the economy in general - all of these are likely to contribute to aggregate productivity growth. Our econometric analysis using panel data for 118 countries from 1997-2017 provides some evidence of ICT capital deepening helping to reduce informality's negative impact on aggregate productivity growth. However, the moderating effect is modest compared to the magnitude of the negative impact of informality, indicating the need for a faster and more intense digitization efforts in emerging & developing economies. Moreover, investments in complementary factors including skills and infrastructure are imperative to fully unleash the potential of ICT in reducing the negative impact of informality.

Examining the role of ICT, transportation energy consumption, and urbanization in CO2 emissions in Asia: a threshold analysis.

ICT is viewed in earlier research as a double-edged sword that may either help or hurt the environment. Asian nations' ICT penetration has significantly expanded in recent years, and they are eager to bring about a digital revolution by building up their ICT infrastructure while consuming less energy for transportation and urban growth. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate how ICT might reduce CO2 emissions through the use of transport energy and urban development. Empirical and theoretical debates have been remaining ambiguous and contentious topic of whether energy consumed by the transport sector and urbanization causes CO2 emanation in Asia, and what role ICT played in determining the level of CO2 remains unanswered. This study adds to the ongoing discussion for sustainable transportation in ten Asian nations for 30 years that concentrate on the relationship between the energy consumption of transport, urbanization, ICT, and carbon emanation (1990-2020) and checked the validity of EKC. The STIRPAT and panel threshold models having two regimes are used to explore the stochastic impacts of the dependent and explanatory variables. We have divided explanatory into two categories, that is, the threshold variable ICT and the regime-dependent variables urbanization and transport energy consumption. Our results confirm that the EKC hypothesis holds in these Asian economies. Thus, our findings indicate that the environmental quality improves in terms of reduction in CO2 emissions when ICT passes the threshold level due to the technological advancement in ICT dominating the scale effect induced by ICT. Furthermore, the possible policy recommendations are discussed according to the findings.

Informal Sector, ICT Dynamics, and the Sovereign Cost of Debt: A Machine Learning Approach

We examine the main effects of ICT penetration and the shadow economy on sovereign credit ratings and the cost of debt, along with possible second-order effects between the two variables, on a dataset of 65 countries from 2001 to 2016. The paper presents a range of machine-learning approaches, including bagging, random forests, gradient-boosting machines, and recurrent neural networks. Furthermore, following recent trends in the emerging field of interpretable ML, based on model-agnostic methods such as feature importance and accumulated local effects, we attempt to explain which factors drive the predictions of the so-called ML black box models. We show that policies facilitating the penetration and use of ICT and aiming to curb the shadow economy may exert an asymmetric impact on sovereign ratings and the cost of debt depending on their present magnitudes, not only independently but also in interaction.

Articulating CO2 emissions limiting roles of nuclear energy and ICT under the EKC hypothesis: An application of non-parametric MMQR approach

Limiting toxic elements from being exposed to the world’s atmosphere has been the biggest challenge among environmental researchers and stakeholders. Climate change conferences have been counselling the global economies to take serious steps toward profound decarbonization to keep the universal temperature below 1.5 °C. In this context, the direction of environmental research has changed, and researchers are more focused on tracing how to limit pollution and keep it below the threshold level. In this milieu, nuclear energy can make a big difference along with other alternatives to fossil energy. Therefore, we extend the extant literature by exploring the dynamic effects of atomic energy and ICT on carbon emissions (CO2) for top nuclear energy countries using data from 1990 to 2017. To obtain robust findings, we deploy a novel non-parametric econometric approach (i.e., method of moments quantile regression). The results suggest that nuclear energy is a sustainable alternative to historical fossil fuel as it curbs CO2 emissions in the lower, middle, and upper quantiles. Furthermore, our findings corroborate that ICT penetration through the internet, mobile and telephone plays a vital role in improving environmental quality. Moreover, we unveil that linear economic growth jeopardizes the environment by unleashing harmful gases. The findings also support the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis by confirming the negative association between the polynomial economic growth (squared-GDP) and CO2 emissions among the designated nations. Also, the Granger causality test reaffirms the causal nexus among selected series that runs from nuclear energy and technological innovation to CO2 emissions, indicating that any policy shock in both series leads to environmental degradation. We, therefore, advocate that the designated territories keep enriching their energy baskets with nuclear energy and boost ICT penetration to achieve a 100% decoupling of economic growth from pollution.

ICT Penetration and Human Development: Empirical Evidence from the EU Transition Economies

ICT Penetration and Human Development: Empirical Evidence from the EU Transition Economies

Impact of Entrepreneurial Activity and ICT Development on Sustainable Development: Evidence from High-Income Countries

Sustainable development has become a vital issue in the globalizing world given the food insecurity, climate change, significant degradation of the environment and depletion of natural resources, and biodiversity loss. Therefore, the identification of the key factors behind sustainable development is important for the planning and application of the proper policies by countries. In this context, the institutional, demographic, social, and economic determinants of overall sustainable development have been extensively explored, but the interplay among sustainable development, entrepreneurial activity, and ICT development has stayed relatively untouched. This article investigates the effect of entrepreneurial activity, proxied by total early-stage entrepreneurial activity and ICT development, on the overall sustainable development of 15 high-income countries over the 2002–2018 period; it uses the Westerlund and Edgerton cointegration test with a structural break, taking notice of the gap in the empirical literature regarding the determinants of sustainable development. The cointegration analysis shows that entrepreneurial activity and ICT development have a positive influence on sustainable development in the long run, but that the effect of ICT on overall sustainable development is shown to be stronger in comparison to entrepreneurial activity. ICT penetration and entrepreneurial activity should be encouraged through institutional, educational, and fiscal incentives to make progress in sustainable development.

The Impact of Digital Media Learning Apps on Students' Behaviors in Distance Learning During COVID-19 at the University of Jordan

The Corona pandemic created many challenges for all sectors. However, confronting these challenges was easy due to the availability of Information Communication Technology. ICT penetration and usage are largely facilitated especially, in the educational arenas are attaining several benefactions. In the current research, the researcher focused on the Microsoft Team application and the extent to which students accept the e-learning process through it. To achieve the research objectives, the experimental method was adopted by designing an electronic questionnaire distributed among n= 250 students from the College of Languages, University of Jordan. The researcher further executed Structural Equation Modelling for the data analysis and assessing the study model. The results revealed that usability, perceived ease of use, and usefulness, all are major factors that motivate students to use Microsoft Teams Application. As they widely depend on the Microsoft Teams application, it also helps them to continue their educational activities through digital means.

Nexus between macroeconomic factors and remittance inflow in presence of ICT penetration: a panel data analysis of Bangladesh economy

Nexus between macroeconomic factors and remittance inflow in presence of ICT penetration: a panel data analysis of Bangladesh economy

How do financial fragility and ICT penetration affect renewable energy consumption and green growth in top-polluting economies?

Green growth is an extension of traditional economic growth. Financial fragility and ICT penetration are important pillars of green growth sustainability. However, very limited studies have explored this association and provided conflicting results. Thus, our study intends to fill this vacuum by exploring the impact of financial fragility and ICT penetration on renewable energy consumption and green growth for the top five polluting economies over the period 1996-2020. In this study, financial fragility is measured by bank costs and bank non-performing loans. Panel ARDL technique is used to find out long-run and short-run results estimates. Financial fragility reduces renewable energy consumption and green growth in the long run. However, internet penetration enhances renewable energy consumption and green growth in the long run. Our findings suggest imperative policy implications for the green economy.

ICT Development, Innovation Diffusion and Sustainable Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study aims to explore the impacts of ICT and innovation on sustainable economic growth and the direction of causal relationships among them in a trivariate framework. The study employed the DOLS and Panel VECM for causality to study the relationships for 33 Sub-Saharan Africa countries categorized based on income between 2000 and 2020. The study uses annual time-series data that were obtained from the World Development Indicators (WDI) database for the empirical analysis. Results from the DOLS show that both ICT development and innovation contribute positively to sustainable growth in all the categories of countries. However, the marginal effects of innovation on sustainable growth are very small compared to ICT development, especially for low-income countries. The VECM result confirms significant causal relationships among the studied variables in the short and long run. Policies should be geared toward channeling resources to enhance ICT skills, access, and usage in the continent. This can be achieved if organizations engaged in the SSA agenda for prosperity, provide the support needed to complement different governments’ efforts in advancing ICT penetration and innovation diffusion in the continent. Also, it is important for income groups to be considered when establishing and implementing such policies.

The Effects of ICT on Environment Quality: The Role of Green Technological Innovation in Asian Developing Countries

To address the existing environmental challenges, the contributions of ICT and green technological innovation have gained considerable scholarly attention in recent decades. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of ICT penetration including green technological innovation on environmental quality in selected Asian developing countries, using data spanning the period 1990-2018. The long-run relationships among the variables are confirmed using panel ARDL and robust least squares techniques. The results suggest that environmental pollution diminishes after a threshold level of ICT development is attained. However, a significantly decreasing influence of green technological innovation is found on carbon emissions, leading to increased energy efficiency by promoting carbon-peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Furthermore, a bidirectional causality running from carbon emissions to ICT penetration and green technological innovation is affirmed by the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test. Therefore, more sound fiscal incentives must be implemented to further strengthen the efficient use of ICT products along with green technological innovation.

Improving ICTs (Mobile Phone and Internet) for Environmental Sustainability in the Western Balkan Countries

The aim of this paper is to replicate an existing study using the Generalized Method of Moments on the impact of ICT penetration (Mobile Phone and Internet) in Western Balkan countries on environmental sustainability through changing CO2 emissions for the period 2000–2015. A two-step system GMM method is used to handle both endogeneity of the independent and persistency of the dependent variables. Two important findings are derived: First, we find that mobile phones have a positive impact, whereas the Internet has a positive but insignificant impact on CO2 emissions per capita in noninteractive models. The impact of ICTs is insignificant as far as CO2 emission from liquid fuel consumption is concerned in noninteractive specifications. Based on this finding, we suggest policymakers of Western Balkan countries follow interdisciplinary policies and strategies considering ICTs such as Internet penetration to mitigate CO2 emissions. Second, in interactive models, all marginal effects are negative, and in one specification the impact is statistically significant. We argue that increasing Internet penetration has a negative net effect on CO2 emissions from liquid fuel consumption. By calculating the policy threshold for this net effect, we discuss the practical implications for policy making in Kosovo where the average Internet penetration is below this threshold.

Is ICT an enduring driver of economic growth? Evidence from South Asian economies

South Asian countries have shown remarkable progress in ICT penetration and became the fastest growing countries in the region. This paper empirically investigates the impact of ICT penetration on economic growth of four South Asian economies (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) for the period from 1995 to 2016. We used the three core ICT indicators (i.e. fixed-phone subscribers, mobile-phone subscribers, and internet users) individually and in composite index form developed through Principal Component Analysis (PCA). To estimate the long run relationship, study used the multiple cointegration tests like panel cointegration and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) technique and Panel VECM model particularly to investigate the short-run dynamics. Study finds that, ICT penetration in both forms (i.e. ICT composite index and its individual form) have a long run positive relationship with the economic growth of South Asian economies, supporting the leapfrogging hypothesis. We also find that, internet users penetration has more pronounced effects on economic growth followed by mobile-phone subscribers' penetration and fixed-phone subscribers’ penetration, respectively. It suggests that if sampled countries seek to enhance their economic growth in the long run, they should implement particular policies that facilitate ICT with keen focus on internet usage.