Digital Divides and Sustainability: How to Overcome Technological Inequality to Secure Sustainability in the Post-pandemic Future?

Dear Colleagues,

We strive to fight against the virus, which has claimed millions of lives. One of the biggest challenges to humanity and our society is curbing the COVID-19 pandemic around the globe, thus better preparing for the post-pandemic era. The world is experiencing unprecedented changes from many aspects since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the continuous spread of the variants of COVID-19. Until now, humanity’s various responses to the changes, such as the notable development of mRNA vaccines, are converging into a new normal, dubbed as the times of living with COVID-19 (Livingston, 2021; Brammer et al., 2020). In the COVID-19 pandemic, a rapid contraction of the global economy and a decline in economic growth rates have been observed (Contractor, 2021), which causes the restriction of economic transactions, thus worsening economic divide and inequality within societies and even between nations (Galea and Abdalla, 2020; Vatican COVID-19 Commission, 2020). Related to this, the pandemic restricts social interactions between people and devastates human dignity and well-being (Shek, 2021), indicating a fundamental threat to the ways of life that mankind has developed.

Although having negative impacts around the globe, the pandemic accelerated the spread of digital transformation and connectivity (Soto-Acosta, 2020; Adly et al., 2020). As such, digital transformation indicates technologies and methods that enable activities without distinction between online and offline by linking the existing physical environment and the virtual online environment autonomously and seamlessly (Kim et al., 2021). Such digital transformation can offer opportunities to overcome socio-economic–ecological challenges to humanity by using digital, online/mobile, and virtual, technological solutions for video conferencing, autonomous mobility, smart factory, service platform, remote medical service, and so forth. On the one hand, the evolution, adoption, and diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICT) can help us to reduce the technological gap between individuals, firms, and nations affected by COVID-19 (Misha et al., 2020; Akpan et al. 2020;  Amankwah-Amoah et al., 2021). On the other hand, however, rapid digital transformation through ICT innovation may seriously threaten technologically vulnerable individuals, societies, and nations. Indeed, there is a double-edged sword of technologies. Digital technologies can have some negative impacts on our society as well (Beaunoyer et al., 2020; Magis‐Weinberg et al., 2021; Lai and Widmar, 2021); namely, data/information asymmetry and digital literacy, a swift convergence of goods and services, monopolization of the market by the lead firms and thus winner-takes-all phenomenon and, most importantly, the ‘digital divide’ at the individual, societal, and national levels.

We believe it is timely to conduct multidisciplinary research exploring how we can overcome the digital and technological divides in the era of COVID-19, in the hopes of improving the well-being of all to make a better sustainable society in the post-pandemic era. We believe this Special Issue provides novel insights to opinion leaders, scholars, business decision makers, and policymakers in  terms of the sustainability implications of technologies and crises at various levels (individual, societal, national, and transnational). The following are some of the tentative topics that guest editors seek conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative papers on:

• To resolve the digital divide, how do private enterprises integrate online activities with offline-centric activities?
• How do multinational corporation achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) through digital technologies?
• In the era of Covid-19, what are non-market strategies a firm can plan, utilize, and implement to resolve the digital divide issue for their business or society?
• In the post covid-19 world, how can we reduce digital divide between advanced and emerging economies?
• How digital transformation can contribute to improving the welfare of disadvantaged?
• How does digital transformation influence information competency between individuals, societies, and countries? Will it attenuates or exacerbate inequality in information competency?
• How does digital transformation influence educational environments and systems? Will it attenuates or exacerbate inequality in educational opportunity? Do changes contribute to sustainable development of society?
• In the era of Covid-19, what kind of policy instruments or firm strategies reduce digital divide at individual level and between generations?
• Will digital transformation shape the competitive landscape in various markets? Will it foster fair trade or enhance winner-takes-all system?

Dr. Huda Khan
Dr. Seunghyun Kim
Dr. Dominic Chai
Dr. Byungchul Choi
Prof. Dr. Yong Kyu Lew
Guest Editors

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• COVID-19 pandemic
• digital divide
• digital transformation
• sustainability
• well-being