The Relationship between Culture and E-business Acceptance in Arab Countries

Theoretically, e-customers gain more benefit than traditional customers as they can access products and services 24-hours a day from anywhere in the world. However, practically, e-business has not been accepted in spite of its availability and the increased number of internet users in developing countries such as in the Middle East. National cultures combined with other factors affect user acceptance and usage of e-commerce websites. However, few studies consider these factors. This has created a need for further research to investigate this phenomenon and to identify the key factors that determine users´ acceptance and usage of websites. The purpose of this paper is to devise a new model that includes cultural variables which explain in more detail the influence of cultural factors on users´ acceptance behaviour. It is expected that the developed model combined with other key findings from this study will be applicable to e-business organisations in Arab countries and globally. This is a quantitative study which uses statistical techniques (such as multiple regressions) in the analysis. The results indicate that cultural dimensions have high influence of users´ acceptance of e-business websites.