Comparing determinants of website satisfaction and loyalty across the e-government and e-business domains

Do the same website qualities determine end-user satisfaction – and through satisfaction, consumer loyalty – across the e-government and e-business domains, or do these different groups of consumers seek different things? This question is an important one, as considerable pressure is currently being placed on e-government to improve by better emulating the private sector, while at the same time almost no research has examined the similarities of these two domains from the consumers’ perspective. Using a sample of survey responses from end users of e-business and e-government websites, data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), this study uses structural equation modelling to compare determinants and outcomes of satisfaction across these domains. Results from the models show that while some similarities do exist, for e-business users, satisfaction is predominantly a function of the ‘personalisability’ of the website, while satisfaction with e-government is determined more equally by the various predictors. We discuss the implications of these and other findings to the proposed private sector-driven transformation of e-government.