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The world is transitioning from the traditional way of delivering public services to the electronic way; this is referred to e-government. There is a huge investment is being done on the e-government initiatives across the world including India as well. However, for a successful e-government implementation it is important to understand citizens’ perception towards these e-government initiatives because no matter how well-designed e-government services are, they will not succeed in realizing promised benefits if citizens are unwilling to adopt them and shift from offline to online engagement. With the current advent of e-government services, user experience and factors influencing the adoption of e-government services poses interesting questions in information systems research and practice. Also, how masses, in a country like India with the digital divide, are accessing and getting benefits out of the e-government initiatives poses an interesting question and still remains unanswered in e-government research, a phenomenon of the last two decades. The questions that this dissertation seeks to illuminate are (i) how users experience e-government services? (ii) what are the critical factors for indirect adoption of e-government services? (iii) what are the critical factors to adopt e-government services at different maturity levels?
This dissertation addresses each of these three questions in three respective parts. Qualitative research has been used in each part of the study using semi-structured interviews. The first research question directing towards exploring users’ experience of e-government services, hence phenomenology approach is found to be most appropriate. Purposive sampling was used to recruit the participants for the first part of the study. The second and third research questions are grounded on the existing theoretical gaps to explain the relationship between the influencing factors and adoption intention, both at different maturity levels as well as indirectly; hence grounded theory approach was found to be more appropriate. Hence, participants for the grounded theory approach are recruited using theoretical sampling. Thematic analysis has been used to analyze the data of each part of the study. The findings of the second part have been further validated by quantitative methods. The study has been conducted in India.
The findings of the first part of the study highlight that users have both positive and negative experience with e-government services. The study revealed that time savings, convenience, ease-of-use, corruption avoidance, fairness in the process, transparency, image, trustworthiness, and connectedness are the key factors that give improved experience of e-government services to citizens and change their behavior by avoiding visiting government offices. Citizens value the e-government services from multiple dimensions like time savings, convenience, enhancement of their image etc. Although e-government services have positive impact on citizens' attitude and behavior, citizens experience challenges like unreliable service, delay in response, website unavailability, inaccurate and insufficient information, and transaction failure with several e-government services that lead to their dissatisfaction and keep them dependent on conventional government mode of government service delivery. The study has also revealed that e-government services at different levels of government have mixed experience. Users found central government websites comparatively better than state and local governments’ websites in terms of performance and ease of use. In the context of m-government services, time-saving, convenient, ease-of-use, compatibility, procedural fairness in delivering government services, image, connectedness are the key experiences of the users that change their behavior to access public service from mobile rather than visiting government offices. Affordability, portability/mobility, quick access, easy to handle, less electricity requirement, easy to charge, long battery life, SMS based services, mobile apps, multi features, and less effort requires to learn mobile usage etc. are the key factors that leads citizens' to experience m-government services better than conventional e-government services. Citizens also sometimes have poor experience with m-government services due to small screen size, high memory usage due to several mobile apps, and poor mobile network that results in call drop and poor internet connectivity.
The second part of this study reveals thirteen factors influencing indirect adoption of e-government services. Access to an intermediary, intermediaries’ service charge, risk-averse characteristics, and value-added services are novel factors revealed by this study. Lack of resources, lack of computer self-efficacy, perceived difficulty in use, and lack of multilingual option as factors for indirect adoption have been found to be contrary to the respective influencing factors like availability of resources, computer self-efficacy, perceived ease-of-use, multilingual option, which are significant for direct e-government adoption discussed in the extant literature. Remaining five factors perceived awareness, perceived functional benefits, perceived compatibility, trust of intermediary and social influence were also identified by extant studies as factors for direct adoption. The quantitative techniques found all thirteen factors significant to indirect e-government adoption.
The third part of the study has considered four e-government services maturity levels: information, two-way communication, transaction, and political participation. The study reveals that factors influencing adoption of e-government services at different maturity levels differ. The study has identified thirteen, thirteen, twenty-six, and fifteen factors to be influencing the adoption of e-government services at information level, two-way communication level, transaction level, and political participation levels respectively. There are six novel identified factors which are previously unexplored in e-government adoption literature. These novel factors are auxiliary facilities, connectedness, corruption avoidance, transparency and fairness, customer support and forced adoption.
The study advances the literature by answering the above research questions. The findings of this research may guide public administrators and policy-makers to develop and deliver e-government services in a manner that will foster quick adoption by citizens for fast benefit percolation. |
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