Assessing the Impacts of Electronic Commerce Diffusion on Development

While the concept of economic development has been widely used to understand the health and wealth of countries, it is accepted that the access to the internet for electronic commerce transactions enable generation in income and improvements in lives. However, with the rise of disparities in income within countries, electronic commerce opportunities can be limited to the few with internet access. In this paper, we investigate how e-commerce diffusion affects economic development and factors of electronic commerce diffusion that promote or impede economic development. Using data available through international data collection agencies, we analyze three ASEAN members with relatively close GNI as of 2013 as well as three countries with largely high GNI as of 2013. The contribution of this paper is in understanding the impact of electronic commerce diffusion on development.