Engaging Citizens in Managing Electronic Government Service Quality: A Country-Level Analysis

Despite an extensive amount of research carried out and knowledge accumulated to explain the adoption of electronic services in public sector, the issue of managing egovernment service quality (EGSQ) remains an unresolved and relatively understudied topic. To address this knowledge gap, using the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) theory and the literature on citizen engagement (or participation); we posit that information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, lack of citizen orientation (in form of low ethics and high corruption), and institutional regulations will have both direct relationship with EGSQ and indirect relationship with EGSQ through the mediating effects of e-participation. Based on publicly available archival data from 123 countries, our preliminary results supported the hypothesized model. More specifically, ICT infrastructure, lack of citizen orientation, institutional regulations, and e-participation had a direct relationship with EGSQ. Further, eparticipation fully mediated the relationship of ICT infrastructure and institutional regulations with EGSQ. Results also indicate that the relationship of lack of citizen orientation with EGSQ was not mediated by e-participation. Implications of our preliminary findings and future plans of our research are highlighted.