Is mobile phone use associated with spatial dimensions? A comparative study on mobile phone use in five European countries

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate if, and how, mobile phone use is associated with space. In particular, we considered three spatial dimensions, such as the size of the place of residence, the macro-region and the country. We drew the data from a telephone survey designed by us and sponsored by Telecom Italia. The survey was administered in 2009 and conducted on representative samples of the populations of five European countries (Italy, France, Spain, UK and Germany) (N = 7255). Several interesting results emerged. One of these is that there seems to be no longer an association between the volume of use of the mobile phone and the urban environment, but only with the sophistication of its use. On the contrary, the fixed telephone is more intensively used by urbanites. The macro-region assumes a new strength regarding the use of the mobile phone: some macro-regions reoriented themselves towards the mobile phone or the landline phone (like the south of Spain), while others are developing both, such as the south of Italy. The variable ‘culture’ confirms its strong role: Italy is the strongest user of the mobile phone, while the UK and Spain make the most advanced use of it. As to the fixed telephone, Italy shows the least intense use of it, while France the most intense.

Keywords:

• urbanity
• rurality
• mobile communication
• the mobile phone use
• degree of urbanization
• macro-region
• space
• Europe
• fixed telephone use
• Internet use

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Michael Tooke for his invaluable help in revising this text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by Telecom Italia.

Notes on contributors

Leopoldina Fortunati is the director of the Ph.D. programme in Multimedia Communication at the University of Udine where she teaches Sociology of Communication and Culture. She has conducted several studies in the field of gender studies, cultural processes and communication and information technologies. She is also active at cross-European level, and especially in European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) networks. Recently she published in Social Science Research, Mobile Media and Communication, The Information Society, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication and The European Journal of Communication. Her works have been published in 12 languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Slovenian and Spanish [email: [email protected]].

Anna Maria Manganelli is full professor of Social Psychology at the University of Padova and works in the fields of communication and information technology, research methodology, social psychology (theories of prejudice and measurement of ‘modern’ forms of prejudice and sexism, effects of leadership styles on organizational and individual variables) and economic psychology (test of models in the formation of intention to perform economic behavior). She published in Journal of Economic Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences and Leadership and Health Care Management Review [email: [email protected]].

Federico de Luca has published in several international peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), Social Science Research and the Journal of Computer-mediated Communication. His research activities focus on exploring the impact of new technologies into everyday life, on measuring people's knowledge and on more general issues related to health statistics. He has earned a Ph.D. in Social Statistics at the University of Southampton and a European Ph.D. in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1 In order to simplify our language, we will use the term Europe and Europeans to indicate these five countries and their populations.

2 In this study, a weighted data set was used in order to correct some distortions (related to age, education and ownership of computers and access to the Internet) which affected the correct representation of the various quotas of the sample.

3 With respect to the macro-regions, in Italy they include the following regions: North West = Piemonte, Lombardia, Val d'Aosta and Liguria; North East = Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino Alto Adige and Emilia Romagna; Centre = Toscana, Umbria, Marche and Lazio; South and Islands = Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Sicilia and Sardegna. In France: Centre/North East = Centre East, North, East and BP East; Paris = IDF; South = Mediterannée, South East; North West = West, BP West. In Germany: N1 = Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and Niedersachsen; N2 = Nordrhein-Westfalen; N3A + N3B = Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland and Baden-Württemberg; N4 = Bayern; N5 + N6 + N7 = Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen. In the UK: North = North West, Yorkshire, North East, Borders; Scotland/N-Ireland = Scotland, Northern Ireland; Midlands = Midlands; South East/Anglia = London, South & South East, and East; Wales/South West = Wales & West, South West. In Spain: North West = Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Pais Vasco, Castilla y Leon, La Rioja and Navarra; North East = Catalonia, Aragon; Centre = Madrid, Castilla la Mancha and Extremadura; East = Comunidad Valenciana, Murcia and Baleares; South = Andalucia and Canarias.

4 The question permitted the answer ‘I don't know’. This modality of answer was chosen by a high number of participants (Table 1) especially in the UK and Spain.

5 The proposed 20 functions of the mobile phone are: SMS, MMS (sending and receiving messages with photo/video/audio … ), email, chatting, looking through the news (receiving SMS or MMS with news), make photo, make video, MP3, games, voice recording, Bluetooth, radio broadcast, instant messaging, internet browsing, download logos and ringtones, download software, using the handset as a modem, Clock, Text editing (writing with T9) and alarm clock.

6 The proposed 14 functions of the Internet are: use messenger/an instant messaging, make telephone calls with Skype (or similar), use a social network site (like Facebook or MySpace), download music/movies/TV programme, watch TV, read and send emails, buy product or services, booking and buying flight or accommodation for trip, home banking, gaming online, read online newspaper, go to blogs, participate in forum, look for info (telephone numbers, railway timetable, etc).

7 There were no relevant problems with regard to multicollinearity. All Variance Inflation Factor (VIFs) are <3.24.

8 Although it is reasonable to suppose that income might have an impact on ICT usage, in this case we decided not to include it in the analysis because 58.9% of respondents did not provide any information about it (for privacy reasons). Income is generally a weak variable in surveys like this because of the high level of non-responses and our survey was unfortunately not an exception.

9 The high and frequent significance of the macroregion variable confirms that the multilevel approach was to be preferred to the ordinary linear regression model. The log-likelihood ratio tests also confirm this conclusion: out of 10 models, for 7 times the significance of the test was lower than .05, it was once between .1 and .05, and twice above 0.1. Other socio-demographic variables, such as activity and income, were not included in the model because in the literature it is shown that they are usually correlated with education.