| This paper examines characteristics of innovation diffusion in 460 municipalities (including 325 that adopted official municipal web sites) in the five major Texas metropolitan municipal regions - Austin, Dallas - Ft. Worth, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio - through examinations of the decisions to install official municipal web sites. The time period of the research is from March 1996 to January 2009.;The project uses visual, reductive, Poisson and Ordinary Least Squares linear regression modeling analyses to compare the actual installation dates of these official municipal web sites to prior theories of rates of innovation diffusion. It analyzes published variables and generates original survey research to obtain other key independent variables for each city. It uses the Rogers' innovation decision process model. It analyzes Walkers' internal determinants and external characteristics and Berry and Berry's subsequent model of motivations, resources, obstacles, other related policies and external factors of state innovation characteristics to determine which characteristics are most important in determining innovation among these Texas municipalities. It determines when the factors are the same for local governments as for state governments, and when they are not.;The research project clearly demonstrates the significant impact of resources, as well as network links and decision-making factors, on the diffusion of technological innovations like the Internet and official municipal web sites. |
