Measuring the effect of internet adoption on paper consumption

Luis Andres, Alejandro Zentner and Joaquin Zentner

No 6965, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: A large fraction of the total supply of paper is produced with technologies that have serious adverse consequences on the environment and cause significant health problems, such as cancer. This paper reports on how Internet adoption affects paper consumption. The study used country-level panel data on Internet penetration and paper consumption disaggregated into various paper categories. The empirical strategy is to use fixed-effect models to study whether countries with faster Internet penetration growth have experienced faster declines in paper consumption. The analysis finds that Internet penetration significantly decreases aggregate paper consumption. Further, the estimates show that Internet growth reduces consumption for the paper categories that are more likely to be affected by the diffusion of the Internet (paper used to print newspapers and books and magazines), whereas the growth of the Internet does not have a statistically significant impact on a paper category unlikely to be affected by the Internet (such as sanitary paper).

Keywords: Pulp&Paper Industry; Technology Industry; Environmental Economics&Policies; Nonformal Education; Sanitation and Sewerage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS6965.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:6965

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().