Configural theory for ICT development

This study intends to establish configural theory for ICT development by using fuzzy set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and to contrast the results with those from multivariate regression analysis (MRA). The fsQCA results support three propositions: the highly-developed countries, the highly-developed countries with low population density and the highly-developed countries with low corruption are the sufficient conditions for high ICT development. In addition, the improvement toward developed countries and increases in both population density and corruption are a sufficient condition for the improvement in ICT development. However, fsQCA finds a contrary case: the improvement toward developed countries and decreases in both population density and corruption are also a sufficient condition for the improvement in ICT development. MRA is good at model fitting. FsQCA is good at showing the causal complexities to explain the outcome and successfully predicts the withheld data sets.