What drives global ICT adoption? Analysis and research directions

Information and communication technology (ICT) adoption is increasing globally and offers unique opportunities for information systems (IS) and electronic commerce researchers to undertake research that will have an impact. The purpose of this article is to survey the academic literature on this topic and provide research directions for future work. We analyze economic, social and other factors that drive global ICT adoption and the individual, organizational, industry and economy impacts. We do this with respect to a set of relevant problems, technology opportunities, theories, research methods, and solutions. The integration of these areas enables us to establish a balanced picture of the current state of global ICT adoption research. It also offers a useful means to analyze the kinds of research that needs to be pursued to make additional progress in the related area of e-commerce research. With these ideas in mind, we present five emerging research directions in three different categories: new economic geography, rational expectations theory, and new empirical methods. We also analyze several topics in the global arena of emerging technologies.