The Impact of Trust on E-Government Services Acceptance: A Study of Users' Perceptions by Applying UTAUT Model

Many governments around the world aim seriously to make their services available online and deliver it to their citizens in professional and secure manner. E-government services aims to improve and facilitate the communication between government and citizens by increasing the usage of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in government operations. It will provide all government services in electronic form to all citizens in a timely, easy, high quality and effective manner with great productivity and time savings. However, user acceptance is one of the essential keys for adoption and success of e-government application and services. Many studies emphasize that trust is one of the important factors in the adoption studies of e-government. This paper examines the effect of trust as independent variable of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model on user’s acceptance and use of e-government services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Based on the amended (UTAUT) model we study the impact of trust on the adoption of e-government services form citizens’ perception. DOI: 10.4018/jtd.2012040105 International Journal of Technology Diffusion, 3(2), 50-61, April-June 2012 51 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. citizens in professional and effective manner. It reflects the intention for public organizations and governments to make change and utilized ICT revolution to provide their services to citizens (Heeks, 2001). According to Gronlund (2002) Governments aim to improve their services quality, reduce costs, and enhance the online communication between government and citizens by utilizing the ICT and Internet capabilities. There are numerous studies have been conducted to study the relationship between e-government services and citizens acceptance of that services. The result show that most government sectors do not provide sufficiently the e-services that citizen needs or expected form their governments (Cook, 2000). The successful adoption of e-government services depends heavily on the citizens’ acceptance to use the online services. Therefore, government sectors should first concentrate and understand the factors that influence citizen acceptance to adopt the e-government services. Carter and Belanger (2005) reported the significance of citizens’ trust in the government and the technologies in influencing e-government adoption. Moreover, Wang and Emurian (2005) emphasized that lack of trust is one of the most formidable barriers to e-service acceptance and use, especially when financial or personal information is required. The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the impact of trust on user adoption of e-government services by employing the UTAUT model in the context of KSA. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section two briefly reviews the literature on main concepts such as: e-government, e-service, trust in e-government studies and UTAUT model. Section three presents the research methodology of this study. Section four present the result of analysis process of the study. Section five present and discuss the impact of the factors in the study model and its influences on adoption process. The last section presents conclusions and an outlook on research limitations. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW The objective of this section is to review the updated and available literature related to the study area. It reviews several relevant issues such as e-government, e-service, trust and UTAUT model. 2.1. E-Government and E-Services Concepts E-government is a new wave in the information revolution. Many governments around the world follow this phenomenon hoping to reduce costs, improve services delivery for citizens and to increase effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector. In fact, there are many definitions for the term e-Government and differences reflect the priorities in the government strategies. Moon and Norris (2005) provides a simple definition that e-government is perceived as “means of delivering government information and service” (p. 43). Isaac (2007) gave definition to electronic government as government’s use of technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications, to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens, business partners, employees, other agencies, and government entities. Fang (2002) defined e-government as a way for governments to use the most innovative information and communication technologies, particularly web-based Internet applications, to provide citizens and businesses with more convenient access to government information and services, to improve the quality of the services and to provide greater opportunities to participate in democratic institutions and processes. On another hand, Rust and Kannan (2002) defined e-service as the providing of service over electronic and communication facilities such as the Internet. According to Sahai and Machiraju (2001) e-service is a service provided via the Internet technologies that assists users to complete tasks or conduct transactions 10 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/impact-trust-government-servicesacceptance/74159?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Computer Science, Security, and Information Technology. Recommend this product to your librarian: www.igi-global.com/e-resources/libraryrecommendation/?id=2