On the Interaction of Source and Channel Choice in the Government-to-Business Context

Communication processes between governments and businesses are increasingly networked. This paper increases our understanding of the information seeking behavior of businesses in the Government-to-Business domain. We conducted a quantitative study among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the Netherlands to discover source-channel interaction. The results provided several interactions regarding nature of relationships with sources, channel and source choice. This proves that it is important to consider source and channel choice together to gain an important insight regarding information seeking behavior of businesses. Today’s networked environment implies that besides having direct contact with governments, businesses make use of other sources to get governmental information. In addition, they use various channels to contact these sources, suitable to the type of relationships. This is vital information for governments, because it helps to optimize their service delivery strategy towards businesses.