CONSTRUCTING DIGITAL ECONOMY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR ASEAN COUNTRIES

MEI TEING, CHONG (2025) CONSTRUCTING DIGITAL ECONOMY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR ASEAN COUNTRIES. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

Digital revolution has dramatically changed the world. Today, ASEAN is a key global economy but yet to be a key digital economy. As recognising digital integration lays the foundation of digital economic innovation and growth, ASEAN quickly adapts to change by targeting ‘single digital market’ as the regional market plan and secures massive opportunity to leapfrog in the vanguard. Digital integration is imperative but digital divide among member countries could be a hurdle to promote the region as a global hub of technological progress and growth. This study aims to assess the digital economy performance of ASEAN Member States (AMS) through the construction of a comprehensive Digital Economy Performance Indicator (DEPI). Specifically, the study has three main objectives: (1) to evaluate the performance of AMS across five critical dimensions—connectivity, infrastructure, affordability, human capital, and digital technology integration; (2) to aggregate these dimensions into a composite index using the entropy weighting method to ensure objectivity; and (3) to compare the digital economy performance of AMS for the period 2017–2021 to identify strengths, weaknesses, and developmental gaps. The entropy weighting method is chosen as the estimation strategy to derive unbiased weights for the indicators based on data variability. The weighted score of all dimensions is then aggregated into a final index score annually that wholly represents the digitalisation performance of each member country. The findings show that Singapore tops in all dimensional performance across years. From intra-country perspective, the analysis provides useful insights for all individual member country to identify the level of performance across dimensions with the calculated final scores. Meanwhile, inter-country analysis enhances economic convergence and reduces development gap within the region. The study will be of great assistance to propel ASEAN towards a digitally-enabled economy that is secure, sustainable and transformative, and to further leverage digital technology to enable an innovative, inclusive and integrated ASEAN as in ASEAN Economic Community 2025 vision.

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