The Influence of demographic and socio‐economic factors upon using information technology among more, moderate, and less developed countries in the globe

Abstract

There is now a grow ing cross‐national empirical literature on the information technology, but it is limited, and an im portant lacuna remains. Al though widely hailed as a new, powerful engine of global social and economic change, there has been very little sociological theorising and research on the globalisation of the information technology. This study deals with what happened in global and countries variations regarding the information technology. It investigates whether the level of human development and the presence of a sizeable growth of Internet hosts around the globe are related. The objective of this study is to identify and explore the relationships between the demographic, socio‐economic factors and using information technology among and within different levels of development in the globe. Data were collected from various sources. The sample involved 120 countries that have available data. These countries are divided by level of development as follow ing: 41, 47, and 32 countries as more, moderate, and less developed countries, respectively. The statistical methods include descriptive statistics and standardised regression coefficients. In more developed countries, the results suggest that GNP per capita, percent of unemployment, and percent of public expenditure on education were statistically significant upon using information technology. The results in moderate developed countries indicate that about 49% of the variance in using information technology are explained by total population, percent of rural population, age dependency ratio, and GNP per capita. Rural population, percent of educated youth, and percent of expenditure on tele communications were the best predictor variables of using information technology in less developed countries. Clearly, without government policies and strategies and national organisations’ efforts, the world countries will continue to divide into the information rich countries and the information poor countries.

Citation

Ragab El‐Ghannam, A. (2005), "The Influence of demographic and socio‐economic factors upon using information technology among more, moderate, and less developed countries in the globe", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 25 No. 10/11, pp. 37-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330510791379