Advanced digital skills of the Spanish population from 2015 to 2021. Socioeconomic and geographical factors according to an ordered probit model

The increasing digitalisation of the economy, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, requires the population to have advanced digital skills. In a decentralised country such as Spain, it is necessary to identify the population’s model of digital skills acquisition by taking geographical variables into account. To this end, the aim of this research is to analyse the impact of socioeconomic and geographical variables on the level of advanced digital skills of the Spanish population including two spatial levels: regional (Autonomous Communities) and local (provinces) from 2015 to 2021. An ordered probit model is used with microdata provided by the Spanish National Statistics Institute’s Survey on Equipment and Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Households (ICT_H) for 2015, 2019 and 2021. The results of this study show that socioeconomic factors have a greater influence than geographical factors on the digital skills acquisition model. The model has undergone changes with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase of advanced digital skills among the employed and the unemployed compared to inactive persons. Moreover, the importance of educational level is corroborated and the importance of daily Internet use increased during the pandemic. There was also less regional than provincial dispersion in the probability of converging in digital skills with the region and province of Madrid. This study contributes the evolution over time of the model of digital skills acquisition with socioeconomic and geographical variables, identifying intra-regional differences and indicating whether there is spatial dependence between regional and local levels in Spain, with a view to reducing them in terms of sustainability.