Since the last few decades, most of countries in the world have undergone a productive, social and economic transformation, giving rise to the Information Society (IS). The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is one of major aspects in this transformation. That is why lots of countries are increasing to move towards more intensive ICT use and the development of ICT which impacts higher overall competitiveness in numerous ways. In the information society, some researchers started studying the link between ICT and human development (Vinluan, 2011; Kshetri, 2013; Al-Khasawneh et al., 2013;). However, the relationship between the ICT and the effect on human development is not fully understood (Bankole et al., 2011). Recently, some of studies started investigating the ICT impact on human development with data from limited regions in a country or countries (Asongu and Le Roux, 2017; Hashem, 2015; Bankole et al., 2013). Therefore, the main objective of the study is to extend a IS literature through investigating whether the use of ICT has positive impact on human development at the country level. The study is conducted by panel data analysis with data from 139 countries for 2007-2015. In addition, the grouping analyses based on economic development, gender equality, and cultural difference will be conducted to find the role of ICT in human development with different perspective. The results of the study showed that three indicators of ICT use (e.g., individual internet use, fixed-broadband subscriptions and mobile-broadband subscriptions), are highly significant to improve human development index (HDI). In the grouping analysis by economic development, this study contributes to extending that the different way of ICT use is associated with human development index (HDI) in developed and developing countries. However, there is no big difference in the effect of ICT use on the human development index (HDI) between two group countries which have high and low gender equality gap.
In the grouping analysis by cultural difference, the study showed that active mobile-broadband subscriptions indicator is not significantly associated with the improvement on human development index (HDI) in low power distance countries and high uncertainty avoidance countries.
