Article selection

It is hard to identify the publishing outlets for e-commerce. Ngai and Wat (2002) did a literature review and classification of e-commerce research from articles found from eight IS journals and one journal specifically designated to e-commerce – International Journal of Electronic Commerce. However, they admit that publishing an e-commerce article is possible through a variety of avenues, largely due to the multidisciplinary nature of e-commerce resea

e-co

Quest 5000 International; - Web of Knowledge;

- International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS);

d - J-STOR.

e databases in the world, containing over o million records from approximately 2,000 journals. The APA-FT has an access to an ection from over 200 Australian journals relevant to the

isciplines within social sciences and humanities. Using the Science Direct, a rese

mmerce research at the level of analysis chosen for this study, as e-commerce adoption or diffusion at societal level often needs to consider a wide range of economic, public policy, legal, and socio-cultural factors. To guarantee the quality of the articles to be included and obtain a comparatively comprehensive collection of relevant studies, this literature survey used six major online databases available at the Australian National University’s (ANU) library homepage as the sources of article collection. They are:

- Pro

- Australian Public Affairs – Full Text (APA-FT); - Science Direct; an

Reasons for choosing these six databases are: they focus on scholarly journals; and they are recommended for doing social science research by librarians from two major universities in Canberra – the ANU and the Australian Defense Force Academy (ADFA). The ProQuest 5000 International provides full text retrieval of the articles in approximately 3,500 journals or magazines. The Web of Knowledge provides for more than 7,500 international journals covering all disciplines. The IBSS is one of the largest and most comprehensive social scienc

tw

online full-text coll d

archer can access the full text of over 1,200 peer-reviewed academic journals published by the Elsevier Press. The J-STOR is a reliable and comprehensive electronic archive of important scholarly journal literature (ANU Library, 2003; ADFA Library, 2002).

Following the study by Ngai and Wat (2002), the year of 1993 was chosen as the starting date of the literature search. According to Zwass (1996), it was then that the

first popular Web browser – NCSA Mosaic was introduced. This browser began to bring people and businesses to the Web. Therefore, this year may be considered the starting point of e-commerce (Ngai and Wat, 2002).

Altogether 12 combinations of key words were used searching each database. These keywords were “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” plus one among “adoption”, “diffusion”, “society”, “country”, “nation”, “economy”, “readiness”, “environment”, “region”, “urban”, “rural”, and “city”. After the initial results were obta the full text of each article was reviewed to make sure that only those articles at the societal level and about general conditions for

e-co is study, articles at other

leve erce, or not really related to the

topi Table 2.1 lists the results of the search: totally 31 articles were selected from the six databases; 14 from the ProQuest 5000 International; 12 om the Web of Knowledge; 4 from the IBSS; 1 from the Science Direct; and none from

survey. Thus a manual search was done to review all the artic

ined, the abstract and very often

mmerce development be included. For the purpose of th ls, articles only focusing on one aspect of e-comm c were all eliminated.

fr

the APA-FT and the J-STOR. During the survey the databases were used one after another in the order they are listed in Table 2.1. If an article appeared in more than one database, it was counted only in the first database it appeared. This might be the reason why few articles were selected from the IBSS and the Science Direct. The reasons that no articles were selected from the APA-FT and the J-STOR might be that the APA-FT is only focused on Australian journals and the J-STOR does not include current issues (ANU Library, 2003). The advanced search option of the ProQuest 5000 International can combine the search using “electronic commerce” and that using “e-commerce” into one search, so there were only 12 search results from the ProQuest 5000 International.

In comparison with the nine journals used by Ngai and Wat (2002) in their literature review and classification of e-commerce research, only one journal – International Journal of Electronic Commerce was not covered by the six databases used for this literature

les published in International Journal of Electronic Commerce since its inauguration in 1996, but no article was selected for the purpose of this literature

survey.

As supplements to the above search, two other sources – the official websites of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) were also used, as these two international organizations are well involved in global e-commerce growth (Iyer et al., 2002). They have done a wide range of research on developing and pursuing e-commerce strategies, many of which are quoted in academic papers (for example, Dunt and Harper, 2002; Lefebvre and Lefebvre, 2002; Kshetri, 2001).

At the OECD official website (http://www.oecd.org/), a search was undertaken using “electronic commerce” and “e-commerce” as keywords in all the OECD working papers, publications, and reports. Three articles were selected from the 13 results searching working papers, 1 article from the 41 results of publications, and 3 articles from the 209 results of reports. At the UNCTAD official website (http://www.unctad.org/), 69 documents were found using “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” as keywords and 3 were selected (see Table 2.2).

In total, 41 articles were selected for further analysis. A complete list of the articles is in Table 2.3.