Using peer wisdom in the digital wave: A study on peer effects of digital literacy

As digital transformation advances in depth, digital literacy has become increasingly crucial for sharing digital dividends and eradicating absolute poverty. Against this backdrop, this article establishes a digital literacy measurement framework using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies and empirically examines the peer effects of digital literacy. The results indicate that significant peer effects exist in residents’ digital literacy, which function through the mechanisms of learning behavior and neighborhood trust. In addition, peer effects help narrow the gap in digital literacy among residents, and they exert a stronger effect in reducing gaps in general and cognitive digital literacy than in applied and practical digital literacy. While peer effects effectively bridge intergenerational, urban–rural and status perception disparities in digital literacy, their impacts on gender, education, and income gaps are relatively limited. Peer effects present stronger effects in narrowing digital literacy gaps among the offspring, females, urban residents, low-education, high-income, and low-status groups than among the parental generation, males, rural residents, high-education, low-income, and high-status groups. These findings clarify the mechanism and heterogeneity of digital literacy peer effects and provide theoretical and practical implications for promoting residents’ digital literacy and bridging the digital divide.