The Impact of ICT Investments on Human Development: A Regression Splines Analysis

Abstract

Despite the worldwide growth in investments in information and communication technology (ICT), few studies have investigated the complex interactions between components of ICT investments and different dimensions of human development. The purpose of this study is to explore the conditional impacts of ICT investments (Hardware, Software, Internal Services Spending and Telecommunication) on two dimensions of Human Development (Standard of Living and Health) within three contexts (classified as High, Medium and Low income countries). To carry out the study, archival data concerning ICT investments and human development for 51 countries with the largest ICT markets were collected for the period 1994 to 2003. The study utilized a novel approach called regression splines to analyse the data. Results suggest, among other things, that: (1) the impact of investments in the different ICT components varies with context; (2) impacts are in many cases conditional and complex; and (3) the direction of impacts of ICT investment on Standard of Living may be different from the corresponding directions of impacts on Health. It is therefore necessary for policy makers or IS executives to do in-depth tradeoff analysis between the different components of ICT investment to determine appropriate allocations.

Keywords:

• Information and Communication Technology
• ICT Investments
• Human Development
• Gross Domestic Product
• Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Felix Olu Bankole

Felix Olu Bankole is a Lecturer/Coordinator of IT Infrastructure and Application Management Programme at the University of the Western Cape. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town. He is also a Research Associate at the Centre for IT and National Development in Africa (CITANDA) at the University of Cape Town. His current research interests are in the area of ICT and national development, Data Mining and Business Analytics.

Kweku-Muata Osei-Bryson

Kweku-Muata Osei-Bryson is Professor of Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has also worked as an Information Systems practitioner in both industry and government. He currently does research in various areas including: Data Mining, Expert Systems, Decision Support Systems, IT & Productivity, Information Systems Outsourcing, and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. He has published in various leading journals including Information Systems Journal, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Information Sciences, Information and Management, Information Systems Frontier and European Journal of Operational Research.

Irwin Brown

Irwin Brown is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems (IS) at the University of Cape Town. Irwin's research interests relate to issues around IS in developing countries contexts. He has published in outlets such as the European Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, the International Journal of Information Management and Electronic Journal of IS Evaluation