A Model for Willingness to Adopt Open Government Policies in Iran

Based on the policy diffusion framework, some policies are adopted by policy makers. On the other hand, the ‘open government concept’ offers options to solve problems and challenges faced by governments, including corruption, distrust among citizens towards the government, weak inter-relationship between government and citizens, and weak cooperation and interaction among components of the administrative system. This study aims at generalizing the effectiveness of the policy-making system of the country, and analyzing the willingness of policy makers to adopt open government policy. To reach this end, an exploratory mixed research was applied. In the qualitative section, using the meta-ethnography method, factors affecting policy makers’  tendency to adopt policy in Iran and the relationships among the variables involved were identified. At the quantitative stage, after conducting a survey and analyzing the collected data, a final model was presented. The results of the research, based on the analysis of 116 policy makers’ answers, indicate that ‘perceived utility’, ‘perceived risk’, ‘perception of policy implementation capacity’, ‘competitiveness motivation’, ‘issue recognition’, ‘dealing with pressures’, ‘tendency to innovation’, ‘perceived political security’ and ‘acuteness of a given problem’, all have a positive impact on willingness to adopt policy. Also, willingness to open government moderates the effects of ‘perceived risk’, ‘perceived policy capacity’ and, ‘dealing with pressures’ on tendency to adopt policies. Finally, recommendations for researchers and managers are presented.