IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ipt/decwpa/2014-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Value of the Internet for Consumers

Author

Abstract

Several studies have examined the market value of paid-for internet services and internet access. This paper estimates the value of leisure time spent online for which the consumer pays no monetary price and which has become increasingly important as a leisure activity. We apply a methodology developed be Goolsbee and Klenow (2006), which relies on differences in time spent online and opportunity cost of time, to an internet users clickstream dataset for the five largest economies in the European Union (Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain). We find that, according to our most conservative measure, leisure time spent on the internet generated a consumer surplus of between 0.6 and 1% of full income in 2011 in the countries studied. The total consumer surplus for each country amounted to between 18 billion euros (Italy) and 44 billion euros (Germany).

Suggested Citation

  • Smaranda Pantea & Bertin Martens, 2014. "The Value of the Internet for Consumers," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2014-08, Joint Research Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:ipt:decwpa:2014-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/reports-and-technical-documentation/value-internet-consumers_en
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Austan Goolsbee & Peter J. Klenow, 2006. "Valuing Consumer Products by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 108-113, May.
    2. Greenstein, Shane & McDevitt, Ryan C., 2011. "The broadband bonus: Estimating broadband Internet's economic value," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 617-632, August.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Karen A. Kopecky, 2013. "Measuring The Welfare Gain From Personal Computers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 336-347, January.
    4. Scott Wallsten, 2013. "What Are We Not Doing When We're Online," NBER Working Papers 19549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jeremy Greenwood & Karen A. Kopecky, 2007. "Measuring the Welfare Gain from Personal Computers: A Macroeconomic Approach," NBER Working Papers 13592, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Shane Greenstein & Ryan McDevitt, 2012. "Measuring the Broadband Bonus in Thirty OECD Countries," OECD Digital Economy Papers 197, OECD Publishing.
    7. Ward, Michael R., 2012. "Does time spent playing video games crowd out time spent studying?," 23rd European Regional ITS Conference, Vienna 2012 60374, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    8. Smaranda Pantea, 2014. "Has the digital divide been reversed? – Evidence from five EU countries," electronic International Journal of Time Use Research, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)) and The International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR), vol. 11(1), pages 13-42, December.
    9. Pénard, Thierry & Poussing, Nicolas & Suire, Raphaël, 2013. "Does the Internet make people happier?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 105-116.
    10. Russel J. Cooper, 2012. "Measuring the Impact of Innovations in Public IT Infrastructure on the Standard of Living in OECD Economies," OECD Digital Economy Papers 196, OECD Publishing.
    11. Hausman, Jerry, 1999. "Cellular Telephone, New Products, and the CPI," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 17(2), pages 188-194, April.
    12. repec:ipt:wpaper:2013-06 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Oecd, 2013. "Measuring the Internet Economy: A Contribution to the Research Agenda," OECD Digital Economy Papers 226, OECD Publishing.
    14. Goldfarb, Avi & Prince, Jeff, 2008. "Internet adoption and usage patterns are different: Implications for the digital divide," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 2-15, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sobolewski, Maciej, 2021. "Measuring consumer well-being from using free-of-charge digital services. The case of navigation apps," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).

    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. Hersh, Jonathan & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2022. "Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the welfare gains from global trade after 1492," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    2. Mathilde Aubouin, 2023. "Determinants of the Digital Divide: Evidence from France," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 151, pages 37-80.
    3. Hughes, Barry B. & Bohl, David & Irfan, Mohammod & Margolese-Malin, Eli & Solórzano, José R., 2017. "ICT/Cyber benefits and costs: Reconciling competing perspectives on the current and future balance," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 117-130.
    4. John Creedy, 2022. "Measuring the Welfare Gain from a New Good: An Introduction," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 55(3), pages 417-425, September.
    5. Andre Boik & Shane Greenstein & Jeffrey Prince, 2016. "The Empirical Economics of Online Attention," Working Papers id:11100, eSocialSciences.
    6. González Chapela, Jorge, 2016. "Disentangling income and price effects in the demand for time online," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 65-75.
    7. Erik Brynjolfsson & Avinash Collis & Felix Eggers, 2019. "Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(15), pages 7250-7255, April.
    8. Charles R. Hulten & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2017. "Accounting for Growth in the Age of the Internet The Importance of Output-Saving Technical Change," Working Papers 17-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Walid Hadhri & Mohamed Ayadi & Adel Ben Youssef, 2012. "Difference between Adoption and Access Frequency to Internet and Consumer Surplus," Post-Print halshs-00937177, HAL.
    10. Tim Leunig & Joachim Voth, 2011. "Spinning welfare: The gains from process innovation in cotton and car production," Economics Working Papers 1352, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    11. Boik, Andre & Greenstein, Shane & Prince, Jeffrey, 2019. "The persistence of broadband user behavior: Implications for universal service and competition policy," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1-1.
    12. Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2019. "The economic impact of broadband: Evidence from OECD countries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    13. Voth, Hans-Joachim & Hersh, Jonathan, 2009. "Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Rise of European Living Standards after 1492," CEPR Discussion Papers 7386, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Pantelis Koutroumpis & Tommaso Valletti, 2017. "Speed 2.0: Evaluating Access to Universal Digital Highways," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 586-625.
    15. David M. Byrne & John G. Fernald & Marshall B. Reinsdorf, 2016. "Does the United States Have a Productivity Slowdown or a Measurement Problem?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(1 (Spring), pages 109-182.
    16. Sergey Plaksin & Gulnara Abdrakhmanova & Galina Kovaleva, 2017. "Approaches to Defining and Measuring Russia’s Internet Economy," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 55-65.
      • Sergey Plaksin & Gulnara Abdrakhmanova & Galina Kovaleva, 2017. "Approaches to Defining and Measuring Russia’s Internet Economy," Foresight-Russia Форсайт, CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», vol. 11(1 (eng)), pages 55-65.
    17. Lüdering, Jochen, 2014. "The measurement of internet availability and quality in the context of the discussion on digital divide," Discussion Papers 65, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Center for international Development and Environmental Research (ZEU).
    18. Aviv Nevo & John L. Turner & Jonathan W. Williams, 2016. "Usage‐Based Pricing and Demand for Residential Broadband," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 411-443, March.
    19. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Chang, Hung-Hao, 2020. "Does digitalization affect the objective and subjective wellbeing of forestry farm households? Empirical evidence in Fujian Province of China," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    20. Angelo Antoci & Fabio Sabatini & Mauro Sodini, 2014. "Bowling alone but tweeting together: the evolution of human interaction in the social networking era," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 1911-1927, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internet Services; Consumer Surplus; Leisure.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    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:ipt:decwpa:2014-08. 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: Publication Officer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ipjrces.html .

    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.