Social Issues in Electronic Commerce: Implications for Policy Makers

Abstract

Policy implementation for electronic commerce is a complex process since policy makers, national governments in their majority, have to act in a fast changing environment. They need to balance special national demands with international cooperation (Papazafeiropoulou & Pouloudi, 2000). One of the areas that policy makers have to tackle is dealing with barriers that have been reported in the adoption of electric commerce today. These barriers are mostly derived from factors such as lack of awareness about the opportunities offered by electronic commerce as well as lack of trust to ward network security. Additionally the current legislative framework, drawn before the advent of electronic commerce, is perceived as outdated, thus impeding the expansion of online transactions. Policy makers, therefore, find it increasingly critical to update commerce legislation (Owens, 1999; Shim et al., 2000; the White House, 1999) and take other measures to facilitate the uptake of electronic commerce.