This is My Municipality: Unveiling the Significance of Citizens Identification With Their Municipality in Municipal E-Government

Abstract

Municipal e-government adoption faces challenges from a federal governmental structure. Diverse local factors in municipalities, like region-specific culture and norms, can lead citizens to identify with their municipality. To study how their social identity and belonging to the municipality affect the adoption of municipal e-government services, we build a framework based on social identity theory and previous literature on municipal e-government adoption. We analyzed data from 140 inhabitants of a German municipality participating in an ongoing e-government pilot project using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Our research shows opportunities for increasing municipal e-government adoption by strengthening citizens' belonging to the municipality and by successfully communicating ongoing e-government initiatives. With our study, we emphasize the need to view internal aspects, such as technology-related factors, as well as external, community-related factors, and open new avenues for future research on municipal e-government and e-government pilot projects.