Estonians tend to avoid e-shopping - survey
08.02.2008
TALLINN, Feb 08, BNS - Estonians use the Internet for shopping significantly less than citizens of other European Union countries even though the country ranks among the first in terms of Internet penetration, it appears from a selection of statistics Eurostat released today.
Last year 9 percent of Estonians ordered goods or services over the Internet compared to the EU27 average of 30 percent.
The proportion of online shoppers was the same in Portugal and even lower in Greece (8 pecent), Lithuania (6 percent) and Bulgaria and Romania (3 percent each).
Some 12 percent of Estonians avoid e-shopping because of security concerns. This corresponds to the average for all 27 EU member states.
The numbers of Internet users in Estonia are among the highest in the EU. In the last three months 64 percent of Estonians had used the Internet. The average for the EU27 in 2007 was 57 percent.
The highest percentages of Internet users were recorded in Holland (84 percent), Denmark (81 percent), Sweden (80 percent) and Finland (79 percent) and the lowest, in Romania (24 percent), Bulgaria (31 percent) and Greece (33 percent).
Internet banking plays a considerably bigger role in Estonia than in most EU countries. On the average 44 percent of Internet users in the EU have used online banking services. Internet banking is most common in Finland (84 percent), Estonia (83 percent) and the Netherlands (77 percent).
By comparison, only 5 percent of Bulgaria's residents, 7 percent of Romanians and 12 percent of the Greek have used Internet banking services.
Nearly one-fourth or 23 percent of EU27 Internet users had had a computer virus. Computer security is above the EU average in Estonia where the corresponding percentage was 15 percent. Only the Czech Republic had an ever lower rate at 7 percent.
Virus attacks were most frequent in Lithuania where 41 percent of users had suffered from viruses.
The data presented in this selection come from surveys conducted in all 27 member states of the EU in 2006 and 2007 that covered individuals aged 16 to 74.
Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8862, sise@bns.ee
 
|
