Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 6 Issue 1 2008 (11-22)
LOT is the least tested dimension in cross-culture studies (Gong and al., 2007). These authors consider that LOT cultures can better perceive the long term benefits of Internet and, therefore, they are more in favour of the adoption of this innovation. They find that this cultural dimension has a significant positive influence on Internet use and access. This impact increases when introducing the control variable “level of education” in the regression model tested for the variable “broadband penetration”. In contrast, Erumban and de Jong (2006) consider that low LOT cultures are more opened to new ideas than high LOT cultures, so that in such cultures the adoption of ICT increases. Though, these authors don’t find conclusive results because of the reduced size of the studied sample. So, we suggest that e-Government adoption increases in countries characterized by LOT cultures (H5).
4.6 Control variables Question on cultural dimensions that have an impact on the PA presence on the Web doesn’t imply a deterministic view of the relationship between culture and ICT adoption. On one side, Bagchi and al. (2004, p.31) argue that “when making prediction about the likely implications culture has for technology use, it is important to avoid an overly deterministic view of either technology or culture”. Kovacic (2005) considers that this relationship is not simply causal. Rather, it is dynamic as the e-Government can have an impact on the national culture. On the other side, even though the UN (2005, p.91) explains disparities between countries in the e-Government adoption by cultural differences, this organization highlights the role of differences in political, economic and social systems, level of development, resource availability, technological infrastructure and human capital. Kovacic (2005) affirms that e-Government adoption depends on the level of democracy in the country, the cost of implementation and the perceived political benefits for the government from implementing an e-Government initiative, and that those more democratic countries are higher ranked on the e-Government readiness list than the less democratic ones. Therefore, other variables may influence the ICT adoption: “while cultures can promote, resist, or shape technology use, they do not wholly determine technology use” (Bagchi and al., 2004, p.31). Hofstede, himself, argues that the five cultural dimensions are statistically correlated to several data of countries. For example, power distance is correlated to income inequalities in a country, and individualism is correlated to Per Capita Gross National Product. He explains that when the effect of other variables (economic variables, for example) is significant, the cultural variables are redundant. But, if the cultural variables are still significant despite of included economic variables, then the effect of culture on observed phenomenon could be confirmed. Erumban and de Jong (2006) and Gong and al. (2007), in their analysis of the relationship between the national culture and the ICT adoption, study the impact of the level of education attainment. This variable will be studied in the case of e-Government adoption by PA. Gong and al. (2007) find that the education level contributes to explain the Internet access and use. They conjecture that the utilization of Internet requires high levels of education and the researches on innovation diffusion must continue to take it in account. Thus, we expect that e-Government adoption increases in countries where the level of education is high (H6).
5. Methodology Qian (2007) affirms that since 2000, more than 25 global e-Government surveys are conducted. The most recognised are surveys of “Accenture, Brown University, Economic Intelligence Unites (EIU), Taylor Nelson Sofres (TN), United Nations, and World Economic Forum/Harvard University” (Qian, 2007). He adds that the UN report on global e-Government readiness is one of the most read and used by practitioners and researchers for the rigor of its methodology and the richness of data on all UN countries it contains. For this reason, information given in the 2005 report is exploited in this study. More precisely, it is the Web Measure Index (WMI) that serves as a measure of e-Government adoption by PA. In fact, “it is important to take a closer look at the online public sector offerings in and off themselves. The web measure index assesses the websites of the governments to determine if they are employing e-Government to the fullest. The web measure rankings are different to the e-Government readiness rankings, which are based on a composite index comprising web measure, infrastructure and human capital assessment” (UN, 2005, p.71). The scores provided by Hofstede serve for the measure of cultural dimensions. These scores are available in 65 countries and 3 regions (Arab world, East and West Africa) (www.geerthofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php). Countries belonging to these three regions are excluded from the present study since it can be inconceivable to consider that these countries possess the same scores on the cultural dimensions than the region. For Arab world, for example, El Louadi (2004) argues that the imputation of regional scores and dimensions to all Arab countries (have one same score (high) in power distance, are
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