Digital exclusion: Who has a risk to fall outside?

In this report, we take a closer look at the requirements for using public digital services, and what factors increase the risk of an individual or a group of individuals not being able to participate in the digital society. We also investigate whether trust is a factor that impacts citizens’ participation in the public digital services. Our main hypothesis is that lower institutional trust is a contributing factor to the digital exclusion.

The set of indicators that is used in the risk analysis for digital exclusion comprises the usage of Internet for E-mail and net banking and digital communication with authorities through information search and sending electronic documents. The analysis shows that old age, low level of education, being retired or staying at home, and living in areas with low population density, are factors that increase the likelihood of falling behind digitally. At the same time living in municipalities that offer advanced digital services decreases the likelihood of falling behind digitally.

Further, we identify three groups of people that either have a lower or higher probability of falling outside. Well-integrated immigrants generally have a much lower probability of digital exclusion, while young students and poorly integrated immigrant women have a higher probability of not using digital services. This is in line with other research, showing a gap between how public digital services are digitized, and the wants and needs that emerge among people in the group with poorly integrated immigrant women. These include digital skills, language skills and need for individually customized help.

Furthermore, we see that trust in public administration increases the probability of having medium or large experience with online services. We also examine whether trust can explain the identified difference in digital participation for well-integrated immigrants and poorly integrated immigrant women. We use employment status as a proxy for integration. For non-immigrants, we find that unemployed have significantly lower confidence in public administration, compared to people with a different work status. For immigrants, on the other hand, we see that trust does not depend on employment status, or how well integrated they are in society. We can thus not conclude that trust contributes to explain the difference we see in digital participation for well and poorly integrated immigrants.

The risk analysis for digital exclusion mainly uses data from Statistics Norway's survey «Use of ICT in households», for the period 2018-2021. The survey is conducted annually among a representative sample of around 1 000 people between the ages of 16 and 79. As of 2021, the sample was expanded to around 2 200 people. Combining the four years gives a total sample of around 5 300 respondents. To test whether trust is a factor that affects the population's participation in the public service provision, data from DFØ's “Norwegian Citizens' Survey” are used. This survey measures the Norwegian citizens’ experiences with public services and their trust in politicians, public administration and the authorities as a whole. The survey for 2021 was sent out to about 40 000 respondents over the age of 18, of which about 9 900 responded.