To use or not to use : Road bumps for citizens’ adoption of e-services

• Published in: Systems, signs & actions signs & actions, 2014, Vol.8 (1), p.25
• Main Authors: Styvén, Maria Ek, Wallström, Åsa, Engström, Anne, Salehi-Sangari, Esmail
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Industrial Marketing; Industriell marknadsföring
• ISSN: 1652-8719; 1652-8719

In order to increase usage of e-government services, there is a need for better understanding of factors driving citizens’ use of such services. This study addresses two main objectives: (1) to assess the influence of trust, perceived sacrifice, and optimism bias on citizens’ intentions to use public e-services; (2) to assess the moderating influence of previous use on the relation-ships between trust, perceived sacrifice, optimism bias and intention to use public e-services. A model of e-service adoption is proposed and tested on a random sample of 422 Swedish citizens. The model confirms the influence of trust and optimism bias; however, trust seems to play a considerably more important role for non-users than for users. Results also suggest that perceived sacrifice in terms of time and effort can be a strong predictor of behavioral inten-tions. Furthermore, the negative effect of perceived sacrifice on the intention to use e-services is much stronger for those who have used service-related information on municipal web sites than for those who have not. For these citizens, the perceived sacrifice is not decreased by the degree to which they perceive themselves as more competent than the average Internet user. Hence, it will be difficult to retain users who have experienced an e-service as complicated and inefficient, even if these citizens are skilled Internet users. In turn, this may hamper the adoption of other e-services.