Empirical Research on the Influence Factors of E-commerce Development in China

Due to multiple factors affecting e-commerce development, in the environment of network growth, specifically the dramatic increase of mobile Internet users, how to grasp the key influence factors and enhance the healthy development of e-commerce in China? This paper discusses the influence factors of e-commerce development from the perspectives of information infrastructure construction, economic level, educational level, urbanization level, technology level, living standards, human capital level and price index. Based on the time series data from year 2000 to 2012, this paper proposes the influence factor model of e-commerce development by partial least square regression, and analyzes the influence factors using correlation coefficient and variable importance in projection. The research findings show that the most critical factors affecting e-commerce development in China are mobile phone penetration, per capita disposable income, number of computers per hundred households and urbanization rate; and real GDP per capita, knowledge index and Internet penetration also have a certain impact on e-commerce development. This paper reveals the key factors affecting e-commerce development and puts forward some reasonable suggestions in the aspects of information infrastructure construction, mobile e-commerce development, people’s living standards and cultural quality.