Personality and ICT Adoption

Globally, the gender gap still exists. An interesting reason for this is the passive usage or non-adoption of ICT by women who have access to ICTs and can also afford ICTs. In order to understand this phenomenon, an exploratory research was conducted to identify why women adopt current ICTs. The most used ICTs are social media platforms and mobile internet services. An exploratory study was conducted to observe four women: three from South America and one from the Middle East who subscribe to WhatsApp. The major outcome was the plausible influence of a woman's personality on her usage of WhatsApp. The women with high extroversion used social media and mobile phones more than women at the opposite end of the spectrum. The women with very low extroversion almost rejected social media platforms and recorded low mobile phone usage. This implies that women with very low extroversion may not find ICTs appealing. Based on these outcomes, the chapter advocates for a more concrete research to understanding this trend.