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Mobile technologies show great potential to accelerate internet access and usage, especially in developing countries. A better understanding of key drivers and main constraints for mobile internet access is the first prerequisite for governments to design targeted policy solutions. This study exploits a household survey that collects information on information and communications technology access and usage at the household and individual levels in 22 countries in the Global South. The study finds that in addition to infrastructure investment, which has been the main focus of many developing countries, other demand-side factors are of critical importance. Across the developing world, females, the elderly, those who live in rural areas, and those who have a relatively low level of income or education are less likely to adopt mobile internet. Social network effects are found to have a significant positive impact on the usage of mobile internet. Those who have more close friends using an online social network are more likely to adopt mobile internet. Individuals whose five closest friends are using an online social network (such as Facebook or Twitter) are 63.1 percent more likely to adopt it than those without any close friends using such online social network sites/apps. Across regions, although the factors affecting the adoption of mobile internet remain largely the same, the magnitudes of their impacts vary. In Asia, gender differences are negatively associated with mobile internet. In Africa, the impact of education level is more salient than in the other two regions, implying an urgent need to improve digital literacy.

Advances in digital technology are expanding the boundaries of firms. Digital platform firms, which leverage a "platform" to create value through facilitating exchanges between two or more interdependent groups, are the new disrupters in the market. They exhibit distinct features such as scale without mass, positive network effects, accumulation of tremendous data, and a convoluted value creation process with user participation. Meanwhile, they bring more opportunities to traditional businesses by closely connecting suppliers and customers and reducing transaction frictions. Such a changing business landscape calls for adaptive policies and regulations. This policy paper lays out the key policy and regulatory issues around digital businesses. Competition laws need to be revisited to address the winner-take-all tendency of digital platform businesses. Tax systems should also be updated to close the loopholes available to digital platform businesses so that they pay their fair share to society. This paper also provides the first analysis of the World Bank's Digital Business Indicators initiative, which collects information on the existence and quality of regulations in broadband connectivity, digital payment, data privacy and security, as well as logistics, in 21 pilot countries. It aims to explore the possibilities for developing the regulatory and policy indicators that governments can work with to promote the digital economy.

AbstractPayment notifications are becoming ubiquitous due to the popularity of online payment, which are usually considered to be records of consumption. However, the effect of payment notifications on consumer behavior has not been fully understood. Given this research void, this study explores the effects of payment notifications on consumers' consumption amount during a multiple‐purchase shopping journey. Considering the prevalence of online payment in China, we conducted four experiments using Chinese samples. The results confirm that payment notifications can evoke consumers' pain of payment, which consequently reduces consumers' subsequent shopping amount. Additionally, we argue that the effects of payment notifications on consumer behavior are different in the early/late stage of the shopping journey or in the gift‐purchasing/self‐purchasing conditions. The findings of this article could help payment application developers to better design payment notification functions.

AbstractExploring the patterns of population change under low fertility is a historical mission for demographic research in the 21st century. Taking Shanghai as an example, this paper discusses the new patterns and characteristics of people's childbearing intention and behavior under low fertility settings. The results show that Shanghai, as a typical society with ultra-low fertility, people's childbearing intention and behavior demonstrate the characteristics such as "downward inconsistency" between childbearing intention and childbearing behavior, "convergence" of childbearing intention and childbearing behavior between different sub-groups, "inversion" in childbearing intention and childbearing behavior with education and income, and the "decoupling" between marriage and childbearing. The childbearing intention and behavior of low fertility society as seen in the case of Shanghai show the patterns as somehow different from what was observed in a high fertility society. It suggests that many of the childbearing patterns shown in the high-fertility era may not necessarily be applicable in low fertility settings, and urges more research to be carried out in this regard.

A robust empirical literature suggests that the development of one's political ideology is the product of an "elective affinity" between the discursive, socially constructed elements of ideological belief systems and the psychological constraints, motives, and interests of those who are drawn to those belief systems. However, most studies which support this elective affinity theory have been conducted in the West. In the present study, we tested the theory in China to see whether elective affinities between psychological traits and political ideology are more likely to be universal. Across a nationally representative sample (N = 509), we found initial support for the characterization of the left‐right divide in China, albeit in reverse. Namely, the "liberal Right in China mostly evinces traits of the psychological Left in the West (e.g., lower intolerance of ambiguity), while the "conservative Left" mostly evinces traits of the psychological right in the West (e.g., higher system justification). Epistemic motives were most reliably related to political ideology, while existential and relational motives were more mixed; economic and political aspects of ideology were more closely linked to psychological traits than social/cultural aspects. The present findings provide an extension of existing theory and opportunities for further development.