Barriers to E-Commerce Adoption among SMEs in Sierra Leone: The Moderating Role of Geographical Location

Abstract

E-commerce implementation by businesses in developing countries are faced with substantially greater challenges than businesses in developed countries due to the unreliability of the internet connection, the poor availability of accessing it due to the poor infrastructure, the high cost of doing so, and also the low level of ICT penetration. This study explored the barriers to e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Sierra Leone and came up with solid policy implications as to how to mitigate those challenges that need to be overcome for the success of e-commerce adoption. The main purpose of the research was to identify the most challenging barriers to e-commerce adoption and in the process investigate their moderating effect of geographical location for SMEs. A survey was done to collect 442 usable questionnaires from registered SMEs owners in the capital city and three major rural districts (Bo, Kenema and Makeni) of Sierra Leone. Persons’ correlation and multiple linear regression models were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The Results of correlation analysis showed that technological, organizational and environmental barriers are statistically significant and negatively correlated with e-commerce adoption. The results further showed that technological barrier is the most challenging barrier to e-commerce adoption. Similarly, the moderating effects of geographical locations were tested using regression analysis. The key finding is that, all the predictors have a more negative effect on e-commerce adoption for rural SMEs compared with urban SMEs. Based on the results, the study concluded with making a call for the Sierra Leone authorities, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and SMEs managers to offer conducive business environment, and focus more attention to rural SMEs for expanding their e-commerce adoption capacity.