Page 114 - Culture Technology Communication

National Level Culture and Global Diffusion 99

The first variable used to reflect cultural influence on the adop-
tion timing of a country is uncertainty avoidance. The implications
of uncertainty avoidance for diffusion of an innovation are clear. In
low uncertainty avoidance cultures new ideas will be more readily
accepted than in high uncertainty avoidance cultures. Thus, low un-
certainty avoidance cultures should experience faster rates of diffu-
sion of new technologies.
The second cultural characteristic expected to affect diffusion of
the Internet is gender equality. In his study of the sourcing of inno-
vations Herbig (1994) suggests gender equality will impact a coun-
try’s innovativeness. His rationale for use of this cultural trait in
explaining the source of innovativeness is simple. A country in which
gender equality is low fails to tap the potential of half its population,
thus reducing its potential for innovation. In high gender equality
countries, the potential for innovation is greater because a larger
percent of the total population are in positions to innovate. The use
of this variable is similar to the sex roles variable used by Gatignon
et al. (1989).
The last variable in the culture category is that of English lan-
guage ability. Although the previous two cultural variables are re-
lated to diffusion of technical innovations in general, English
language ability is a cultural variable related specifically to Inter-
net adoption. It has been observed that while languages such as
Spanish and Japanese are gaining popularity on the Internet (Mar-
riot 1998), the ability to speak English will certainly impact the rel-
ative advantage the medium presents. The orientation of a nation
toward English is also important to Internet diffusion because some
of its earliest adopters are English-speaking and therefore non-
adopters who speak English are more likely to be influenced by
early adopters.
In the above section the theoretical variables to explain Internet
diffusion were presented. The list is certainly not exhaustive and
has been constrained by data availability. The data that are avail-
able and serve as measures of these variables are described below.

DATA

The ability of international researchers to practice their craft is
highly dependent on the availability of data. It is a challenge to col-
lect data for a multivariate analysis on a global scale. The following
section describes the sources of the data used in this study and,