Rethinking E-government adoption: A user-centered model

Abstract

E-government acceptance has attracted substantial research interest over the last fifteen years. The majority of this research is based on technology acceptance models primarily because e-government is viewed as a technology for achieving efficiency, transparency, and information management. However, the adoption of e-government ultimately depends on whether users perceive the technology as serving their needs and meeting their expectations. Thus, understanding and incorporating users' needs in the design, organisation, and deployment of e-government are crucial but have been overlooked. This study develops and tests a user-centric model of e-government by using six factors that have been widely discussed in the literature. The factors have been labelled content, accessibility, localisation, e-participation, userfriendliness and awareness/government literacy. The results show that all six factors plus the interaction of e-participation with user-friendliness are statistically significant in promoting e-government use. The research and practical implications of the results are discussed.