The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Energy Poverty and Unemployment in Selected European Union Countries

Marta Postuła, Wojciech Chmielewski, Piotr Puczyński and Rafał Cieślik
Additional contact information
Marta Postuła: Faculty of Management, Warsaw University, ul. Szturmowa 1/3, 03-678 Warsaw, Poland
Wojciech Chmielewski: Faculty of Management, Warsaw University, ul. Szturmowa 1/3, 03-678 Warsaw, Poland
Piotr Puczyński: Faculty of Management, Warsaw University, ul. Szturmowa 1/3, 03-678 Warsaw, Poland
Rafał Cieślik: Faculty of Management, Warsaw University, ul. Szturmowa 1/3, 03-678 Warsaw, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-18

Abstract: The accelerated development of information and communication technologies (ICT) over the last three decades has encouraged researchers to analyse the impact of this phenomenon on the labour market. The potential decline in employment resulting from the proliferation of ICT may reduce access to basic energy services and even lead to energy poverty in the form of inability to heat the apartment as needed, allocating a significant part of revenues to expenses related to heating or problems with the timely payment of energy bills. Because access to energy is of fundamental importance for improving the quality of life and is crucial from the point of view of economic development, it is justified to verify the hypothesis that the accelerated development of ICT in EU countries may contribute to an increase in unemployment and, consequently, translate into a higher level of energy poverty. The described research results were obtained thanks to a comparative factor analysis based on secondary data. The analysis showed that in the period 2009–2019, the use of ICT had a limited impact on the unemployment rate in the EU and had a significant impact on reducing the level of energy poverty in EU Member States. As regards the impact of ICT factors on the level of energy poverty, only IP traffic showed a significant impact in this area. When it comes to the labour market, it was found that employment is chiefly influenced by economic factors such as labour costs.

Keywords: ICT; unemployment; EU; energy poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6110/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6110/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:19:p:6110-:d:642912

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().