ICT diffusion as a determinant of human progress

Abstract

This research poses the question of whether the diffusion of information and communications technology (ICT) in countries can affect human progress. Human progress in this research is defined as progress that allows every member of a society to live in an environment with high economic, political, and civil liberties. To examine the posed question, the authors developed the following three hypotheses. First, ICT diffusion serves as a determinant in human progress. Second, the size of the impact of diffusion of ICT on human progress may differ depending on the income level of the economy. Lastly, the impact of ICT on human progress may differ depending on the type of technological medium. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 102 countries panel for 14 years from 2000 to 2013 with data from the International Telecommunications Union to see the status of diffusion of ICT, the Heritage Foundation and the Freedom House in order to employ the measure of human progress by a yearlagged seemingly unrelated regression analysis with both pooled and grouped samples. The results suggest that the diffusion of ICT is a determinant of human progress at the global level and that the effects differ depending on the type of technology or the income level of the country.

Modelling the Asymmetrical Relationships between Digitalisation and Sustainable Competitiveness: A Cross-Country Configurational Analysis

“…There is a diversity of optimistic and pessimistic perspectives concerning ICT's heterogeneous and complex interactions with national growth, social welfare or government development, results in conflicting academic debates. For instance, while several studies note the beneficial effects of ICT on social welfare, such as reduction of corruption (Bhattacherjee and Shrivastava 2018) or increase of the happiness (Gelot et al 2015); some other reports did not find any significant link between ICT and public value (Mimbi and Bankole 2016), or found partial effects of ICT factors on social welfare (Lee et al 2017;Richmond and Triplett 2018). Regarding the impacts of ICT on government development, while some studies argue that different levels of ICT infrastructure do not correspond to providing e-service (Nguyen 2014); several other findings link the e-government maturity with ICT infrastructure growth (Das et al 2017).…”

A novel extended approach under hesitant fuzzy sets to design a framework for assessing the key challenges of digital health interventions adoption during the COVID-19 outbreak

“…Many areas in the world are deprived of the internet and limited resources so that the digital divide is considered as another weakness of digital health interventions [21] . Also, the digital divide has increased due to the rapid applications of DTs during the COVID-19 outbreak.…”

“…Furthermore, some challenges can arise worries or even can be considered as threats, including infodemic risk [17] , insecure applications [18] , unreliable information [19] , non-economical interventions [20] , digital divide and illiteracy issue [21] , and psychological issues [22] . Besides, digital health interventions can provide several opportunities, including creating a health information system [23] , application of robots, and AI in the healthcare system, especially the medical diagnosis [24] , [25] .…”

Methodological issues in measuring international inequality in technology ownership and infrastructure service use

“…Income, wealth and technology ownership and infrastructure use are correlated (see, for example, Steckel, Rao, and Jakob 2017 for infrastructures or Cruz-Jesus, Oliveira, and Bacao 2018 and Cruz-Jesus et al 2017, on the digital divide) but knowledge on how this relationship holds across different indicators and countries is scarce. Literature on the digital divide on differences in access and utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT, such as personnel computers (PCs), (mobile) phones, radios, television sets (TV) or the Internet) has identified several additional drivers, such as education, urbanization, innovation capacity (Lee, Hong, and Hwang 2017;Pick and Nishida 2015;Skaletsky et al 2016), or regulatory and sociopolitical characteristics of a country (Guillén and Suárez 2005). Access rates to infrastructures vary across countries of similar economic development, with urban areas showing higher access levels, but seem to follow a sequence (from water via sanitation, electricity and telephony) with countries with lower income inequality achieving higher access rates for basic infrastructures (Steckel, Rao, and Jakob 2017).…”

“…Larger inequalities are expected if technologies and infrastructures are examined, showing not only disparities in human development and the distribution of resources across the world but also related to development perspectives of a society as a whole. Inequalities in general purpose technologies such as ICTs and electricity are not only related to basic needs but also affect the productivity of an economy, which can contribute to the widening of income differentials across countries (Lee, Hong, and Hwang 2017).…”