Determinants of service quality and continuance intention of online services: The case of eTax

This article examines the determinants of service quality and continuance intention of online services. We proposed and empirically tested a model with both service and technology characteristics as the main drivers of service quality and subsequent continuance intention of eTax, an electronic government (eGovernment) service that enables citizens to file their taxes online. Our data were collected via a two-stage longitudinal online survey of 518 participants before and after they made use of the eTax service in Hong Kong. The results showed that both service characteristics (i.e., security and convenience) and one of the technology characteristics (i.e., perceived usefulness, but not perceived ease of use) were the key determinants of service quality. Another interesting and important finding that runs counter to the vast body of empirical evidence on predicting intention is that perceived usefulness was not the strongest predictor of continuance intention but rather service quality was. To provide a richer picture of these relationships, we also conducted a post-hoc analysis of the effects of service and technology characteristics on the individual dimensions of service quality and their subsequent impact on continuance intention and found assurance and reliability to be the only significant predictors of continuance intention. We present implications for research and practice related to online services.