Factors Explaining ICT Diffusion: Case Study of Selected Latin American Countries

Abstract

In this age of eminent globalization, the need for countries to remain competitive has sprawled the boost of technological adaptability and acceptability among countries: be it developed or developing in perspective. To gauge such, ICT diffusion has become a vital issue for researchers in regard to its impact on the economic development. The rationale behind such is: the higher extent of ICT adoption in societies, the higher the economic and social development is observed. This paper investigates into a set of Latin American countries to capture the relative effect of various social, economical, and infrastructural variables into the overall ICT level, where ICT level is proxied by the Network Readiness Index adopted from World Economic Forum. The result indicates that the expenses of a country on IT as well as literacy and urbanization are factors to consider.