Exploring causal relationships and critical factors affecting a country’s ICT global competitiveness

The Global Information Technology Report published by World Economic Forum used Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the global competitiveness of a country’s information and communication technologies (ICT). The NRI covers three subindexes with nine pillars, which are treated with equal weights. It does not explore the causal relationships. In order to provide more information to the policymakers for better decisions making, this paper proposes a solution framework to create the causal relationships among the pillars and overall NRI scores, and furthermore, to identify the critical factors affecting the overall NRI scores. Three techniques are employed in the solution framework: super-efficiency data envelopment analysis, Bayesian network classifiers, and partial least squares path modeling. An empirical study is carried out. Policy implications to advance a country’s ICT competiveness are discussed according to the empirical results. © 2011 APBITM Society. All rights reserved.