Factors affecting Internet adoption in Latin America

Abstract

The Internet has become one of the most significant information technologies to help sharing knowledge and making better decisions. Recently, the Internet penetration rate has increased dramatically in Latin America, but 80% of the population still has not accessed the Internet yet. Thus, it is necessary to explore an effective way to increase the Internet penetration rate in Latin America. This paper aims to identify the factors that influence the Internet penetration rate in Latin America. It analyzes correlations between the Internet penetration rate and various economical, educational and infrastructure factors among 18 Latin-American countries. The results show the Internet penetration rate is highly correlated with various macro-level variables including availability of e-government, mobile phones per people, GDP per capita, and international Internet bandwidth. In addition, this paper presents useful suggestions to the countries in Latin America to achieve a higher level of Internet adoption © 2008 IEEE.