# Exploring the Dominance of the English Language on the Websites of EU Countries
## 5 Discussion
### English Language Availability in Websites
Reasons for the variation in percentages may include local culture, economy (for example focus on tourism or exports), and whether a country has more than one official language among others. However, a trend seems to be emerging in that smaller countries tend to put greater effort into making their websites available in English. In order to further investigate this trend, we proceeded to study the interrelation between both a country's GDP and a country's total population in relation to the availability of its websites in English. To analyze the interrelation between the population (population) variable and availability in English, [PERSON]'s correlation coefficient (Pearson's r) has been applied [44]. The results are shown in Table 5 where there appears to be a negative correlation between population and availability in English (\(-0.462\)). This leads us to reject the null hypothesis (there is no correlation between population and availability in English). The significance level is 0.01, confirming the statistically significant negative moderate correlation. In order to investigate if there is a correlation between the availability in English and the economic situation for each member state of the EU, we decided to use the gross domestic product (GDP) indicator. Information about each country's GDP was gathered from Eurostat [45]. [PERSON]'s correlation coefficient (Pearson's r) has been applied in order to see if there is a correlation between GDP and availability in English. As we can see in Table 6, the Pearson correlation is \(-0.446\) at 0.013 one-sided significance, which shows a negative correlation between the two variables. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Variable** & **Type** & **Population** & **Availability in English** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**population**} & Pearson Correlation & 1 & \(-0.462\)* \\  & Sig. (1-tailed) & & 0.010 \\  & N & 25 & 25 \\ \cline{1-1}  & Pearson Correlation & \(-0.462\)* & 1 \\ \cline{1-1}   English & Sig. (1-tailed) & 0.010 & \\ \cline{1-1}  & N & 25 & 25 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).  
\end{table} 
Table 5: Pearson correlation coefficient between (population—availability in English). The moderate negative correlation observed between both population and GDP in relation to the availability of the English language in non-English speaking countries of the EU indicates that smaller and less affluent countries offer higher English language availability in their websites. From a cultural perspective, the largest countries often carry a heavier cultural impact which manifests itself in the form of national pride, while smaller countries might be keener to facilitate communication beyond their own borders. In addition to the cultural perspective, the economy is also a major driving force for internationalization. Countries with a smaller GDP offer a smaller marketplace, which would create the need for businesses to try and increase their reach beyond the country's limitations. As a result, business websites would put extra effort in providing their content in English, something that might not be necessary for a business in a larger country and hence a wider marketplace. In other words, the room to grow as an economic entity is larger in a bigger country which makes the incentive to grow internationally less impactful.