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between the Internet penetration and the wealth of a nation or the development of the
telecommunication infrastructure, it is significant throughout the four different periods.
Therefore, Hypothesis 7, which predicts that political stability in a country tends to
promote faster Internet development, is supported.
Conclusions and Discussion
In this study, we examined a number of factors that may have facilitated or
hindered the Internet development in Asian countries. The results show that GDP per
capita, telecommunication infrastructure, urbanization and political stability correlate
with the Internet penetration in a country. Although our sample size is not big enough to
allow us to carry out more sophisticated statistical analyses such as multiple regression to
gain more confidence on the potential causal relationship between the independent and
dependent variables, our findings nevertheless lend support to a number of assumptions.
As for the four hypotheses supported by our findings, we believe the relationships
can be causal in nature although variables such a GDP per capita and telecommunication
infrastructure do correlate with each other. GDP per capita does indicate a country’s
economic strength as well as how well off the people of that country are. The
deployment of the Internet is a costly venture and only countries with strong economic
power are able to build the Internet in such a way that it allows access to people as widely
spread as possible. On the other hand, individual access to the Internet is also based on
cost-sharing by the investors and the users. That means the financial situation of the
ordinary citizens also play a crucial role in ensuring public access to the Internet. To a
Convention