Week 13_Venkatesh et al (2016)_Xue Guo

Managing Citizens’ Uncertainty in E-Government Services: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of Transparency and Trust

Venkatesh et al (2016) proposes an integrated technology adoption model in the context of citizens’ adoption and use of e-government services. This paper is driven by the underutilization of e-government services, which prevent the e-government to achieve its full potential.  This paper introduces the concept of uncertainty reduction and investigate the effects of citizen’s uncertainty on the use of e-government services.

There are three parts of the research mode of this paper. First, two main factors—information quality (accuracy and completeness) and channel characteristics (convenience and personalization), drive the intention uses of e-government services. Then the model proposes two means of uncertainty reduction—transparency and trust, can partially mediate and moderate the effects of information quality and channel on intention to use. At last, the model examines the effects of intention on the actual use and satisfaction.

Empirically, the paper collects 4430 data from citizen’s attitude towards the use of government websites and online appointment booking services in Hong Kong. The paper conducts hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses. First, the results shown that accuracy, completeness and convenience are positive determinants of citizens’ intentions to use both services. Then the paper tests the mediating role of transparency and trust and finds that completeness and personalization were fully mediated through transparency and trust. The model also includes the interaction terms and find significant moderating effects of transparency and trust.

One of this paper’s contributions is that it draws from multiple streams of research to identify factors that may affect citizens’ use of e-government services. It investigates the mediating and moderating role of transparency and trust, which has not been studied before.