Antecedents of the Adoption of E-Payment Services in the Public Sector

In order to succeed, electronic government initiatives frequently pass a number of different stages, starting with a static Web site used solely for providing information (one-way) and ending with fully interactive sites that are capable of handling a multitude of transactions that may occur in the lifelong relationship between a government and its citizens. The possibility of transferring money online plays an important role for those e-government initiatives that include financial transactions such as paying taxes, fees, or fines. Even though there is a great deal of academic literature on e-payment and e-government issues, this paper combines both topics and proposes a framework and a measurement model that depicts important factors influencing users’ online payment behavior. A structural equation modeling approach has been used to assess the relative importance and the strength of the relationships among different constructs, including users’ previous experience, their trust in e-payment security and the perceived convenience of the payment process. Our results indicate that trust (both in a frictionless use of the system and in e-payment security) can be seen as an important antecedent for the adoption of online payments on the part of the users. From the government’s point of view, the potential for exerting influence seems to be somewhat limited: While national institutions in developed countries are usually perceived as trustworthy, users’ attitudes toward the Internet may be more skeptical, depending on their previous experience.