Deciding to Use ICT in the Arab Culture

Compared to the Western world, the Arab world endures a lack of ICT use and a scarcity in software production and services. One of the explanations that were advanced in order to determine the reasons of these deficiencies is the Arab world’s cultural context. In this chapter, which reports on a doctoral research, we focus on two dominant values which are supposed to be descriptive of the Arab world: obedience to authority and collectivism. We examine their hypothesized influence on ICT use within an Arab context (Tunisia) and at an individual level. Data collection was carried out on 378 Tunisian students in three quasi-experimental settings measuring the degree of obedience, and by a pilot questionnaire determining, among other things, the level of collectivism. While the obedience to the authority figures appears to positively affect the probability of technology use in the first experiment, the rationality seems to influence choices in the second and third experiments, and to deny any pressure of the foreign nationality of the figure. The results of this study also reveal that all participants have a collectivistic tendency. However, the influence of collectivism is found to be mixed.