Evaluating the behavioral intention to use e-Government services from Malaysian's perspective in Kedah state of Malaysia

Abstract

Recognizing the importance of ICT, e-Government initiatives are rising through public organizations and public administration all over the world. Malaysia as a developing country had started implementing e-Government to improve the public services for the people. Unfortunately, public acceptance and usage towards e-Government are still very limited in most developing countries. The main purpose of this study is to investigate citizen adoption of e-government services in the northern region of Malaysia. Importantly, this study aims to develop a conceptual framework that is based on previous literature on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, by examining the relationships between four factors (Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, and Facilitating Conditions) and Citizen adoption of e-Government services. A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from 22 Malaysian citizens in the state of Kedah, Malaysia, randomly. The findings indicate that Effort expectancy, Social influence and Facilitating conditions are the significant predictors of the Malaysian intention to use an e-Government services, while Performance Expectancy is proven to be an insignificant predictor for the Malaysian's intention to use an e-Government services. The study has made contributions to the body of knowledge at academic and practical levels as an important exploratory study that was conducted in the context of Malaysia, a country which aims to be a developed country by 2020. In addition, this study provides some valuable insights into the adoption of e-Government in Malaysian context which could help government agencies to improve the effectiveness of their services.