Understanding Country Level Adoption of E-Commerce: A Theoretical Model Including Technological, Institutional, and Cultural Factors

Authors

Punit Ahluwalia, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Mohammad I. Merhi

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

This paper provides a theoretically grounded model of e-commerce adoption to explain differences in adoption rates among countries. The model extends the existing culture-policy-technology (CPT) framework to examine causal relationships between the technological, institutional, and cultural factors in order to examine country-level e-commerce adoption. Thus, interesting relationships among macro-level factors are hypothesized. The paper highlights the important of risk mitigating mechanisms or institutions to facilitate adoption of e-commerce in countries with high uncertainty avoidance. A call for empirical examination into country level adoption is answered by analyzing macro level data from 69 countries. The hypotheses are confirmed using PLS analytical procedures. The study is timely as e-commerce technology has now taken hold in several countries but its revenues in proportion to the overall total revenues remain low. The study is motivated by significant different in e-commerce adoption rates among countries. The paper makes significant contributions to literature and practice.

Recommended Citation

Ahluwalia, Punit, and Mohammad I. Merhi. "Understanding Country Level Adoption of E-Commerce: A Theoretical Model Including Technological, Institutional, and Cultural Factors." JGIM vol.28, no.1 2020: pp.1-22. http://doi.org/10.4018/JGIM.2020010101

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Journal of Global Information Management

DOI

10.4018/JGIM.2020010101