Abstract

This report documents a research study on the effects of the global culture and cultural identification on the intention to adopt the Internet. The results of the study indicate that acculturation to the global culture is related to the intention to adopt the Internet. The relationship was shown to be mediated by perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and subjective norm in two samples from two cultural communities. When the samples are combined, the relationship between acculturation to the global culture and the intention to adopt the Internet also becomes direct. The model studied includes cultural identification in the form of two different constructs. One of the constructs is ethnic cultural identification and the other is national cultural identification. Ethnic identification has a significant positive relationship with subjective norm in only one case; otherwise these cultural identification concepts appear to be unrelated to the intention to adopt the Internet. This is contrary to prior research (Cleveland, 2006). The study finds that cultural constructs, especially acculturation to the global culture, are important in starting to determine the antecedents of subjective norm in the IS field