Examining the socio-economic determinants of adoption of the 'Government Gateway' initiative in the UK

This paper empirically examines the impact of socioeconomic determinants upon the adoption of a recent UK e-Government initiative, the „Government Gateway‟. Five socio-economic characteristics that provide insights to Government Gateway adopters and non-adopters, as they were identified from the literature review used in this study. These included age, gender, education, income and occupation. The data on these variables was collected on a nationwide scale employing a postal survey. A self-administered questionnaire was sent to 1600 households with a total of 358 responses obtained from the respondents. The findings of this research suggest that the three variables of age, gender and occupation significantly differentiated the adopters from the nonadopters of the Government Gateway, whilst education and income were found to be non-significant. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of promoting the adoption of emerging ICT technologies such as broadband and reducing the digital divide against less privileged parts of the population.