Are Users All the Same? – A Comparative International Analysis of Digital Technology Adoption

Abstract

Rapid technological advances have resulted in an array of new digital consumer technologies in the last decade. While there is a continuous uptake in digital technology adoption, certain groups of users are lagging behind, fueling fears of an increasing digital divide. This article attempts to open the “black box” of users by exploring user-centric antecedents of digital technology adoption. Based on an online survey dataset of 7.231 representative Internet users from Germany, Sweden, United States, Brazil, China, and South-Korea, the empirical analysis aims at comparing user-specific demographic, attitudinal and behavioral factors related to digital technology adoption across countries. While we find that users differ significantly in their digital technology adoption among some factors (i.e. age, people in household, education, and being a student or pupil) across countries, we also identify factors with similar impacts across countries (i.e. net income, gender, children in household, and being unemployed). Counteracting tendencies towards an increasing digital divide, this paper pledges for an extensive differentiation of policy measures based on country specific determinants of digital technology adoption. Gaining a better understanding of (dis)similarities among users of digital technologies, these results shall ultimately promote evidence-based business decisions and policymaking.