Assimilation of social media in local government: an examination of key drivers
| Pages | 427-444 |
| Published date | 05 June 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2016-0182 |
| Date | 05 June 2017 |
| Author | Hui Zhang,Jianying Xiao |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Assimilation of social media in
local government: an examination
of key drivers
Hui Zhang and Jianying Xiao
School of Literature Law and Politics,
China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
Abstract
Purpose –The government has included social media technology applications in the public sector as part of
the fth wave of information and communications technology adoption. Academic interest in social media in
the government sector has been increasing. But there has been little empirical research on the assimilation of
social media in the local government. To ll this gap, based on technology–organization– environment (TOE)
framework, this study aims to investigate the key technological, organizational and environmental factors
that affect the assimilation of social media in local government agencies.
Design/methodology/approach –To empirically test the model, a survey study was conducted. Data
were collected from 150 government employees in the government department of X municipal government in
China. The collected data were analysed quantitatively to answer ve hypotheses using structural equation
model.
Findings –The ndings suggest that technology competence, top management support, perceived benets
and citizen readiness signicantly inuence assimilation of social media in local government agencies. Top
management support is the strongest predictor of social media assimilation in a government agency.
Originality/value –This study is one of the rst attempts that adopted the TOE framework to understand
assimilation of social media in the local government. In addition, the effect of the four factors that include one
technological factor, two organizational factors and one environmental factor, namely, technology
competence, top management support, perceived benets and citizen readiness, on intention to assimilate
social media was investigated.
Keywords Social media, Local government, Assimilation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The government has included social media technology applications in the public sector as
part of the fth wave of information and communications technology (ICT) adoption (Meijer
and Thaens, 2013;Mergel, 2012). Social media have been widely used in government
organizations (Ferro et al., 2013a;Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012) and have been
incorporated into government institutional and organizational frameworks (Mergel, 2012).
Social media offer signicant opportunities (Bertot et al., 2010;Ferro et al., 2013b) and great
benets to governments (Oliveira and Welch, 2013;Picazo-Vela et al., 2012;Yi et al., 2013).
Thus, much government activity, especially e-government activity, has centred on social
media (Bertot et al., 2010,2012;Criado et al., 2013).
However, assimilation differs from adoption and is of greater importance than adoption
(Gallivan, 2001). The reason is “adoption of a technology does not automatically lead to
This paper is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.
2014WA07). The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on
the earlier version of the article and the editors of The Electronic Library.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Social media in
local
government
427
Received 11 September 2016
Accepted 13 November 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 3, 2017
pp.427-444
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2016-0182
assimilation and use” (Scupola, 2008). Regarding the area of social media application in the
government sector, previous research has studied many issues. These issues could be mainly
divided into four categories:
(1) social media application in government agencies;
(2) social media impact on the government;
(3) social media impact on politics; and
(4) social media governance.
But there is little research involved with the assimilation of social media in a government
agency. Furthermore, in the area of information technology (IT)/information systems (IS)
assimilation, many previous research studies have studied IT/IS assimilation in enterprises
(e.g. Liang et al., 2007;Rai et al., 2006). There are a few research studies on IT/IS assimilation
in governments (Choi and Lee, 2009;Hossain et al., 2011). However, little research has
involved social media assimilation in local governments.
The objective of this study is to explain the assimilation of social media in government
agencies. Specically, the answers to two research questions are sought:
RQ1. What context factors affect the assimilation of social media in local government
agencies?
RQ2. What are the prominent factors in determining assimilation intention?
To address these questions, the technology–organization– environment (TOE) framework is
drawn upon to propose a model of social media assimilation in a Chinese local government
agency.
The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section describes the TOE
framework. The third section describes the research model and the ensuing hypotheses. The
fourth section describes the research methodology used to empirically test the research model.
The fth section presents the results of the data analysis. The sixth section discusses the study’s
key ndings. The seventh section presents research implications for theory and practice. The
nal section summarizes the limitations and points out avenues for future research.
Literature review
Previous studies on the use of social media in government agencies could be mainly divided
into four categories (Table I):
(1) social media application in government agencies;
(2) social media impact on the government;
(3) social media impact on politics; and
(4) social media governance.
The category of social media use in government agencies includes:
•The current situation of social media application in government agencies: Previous
studies conducted research on social media application in central governments of
Western countries (Chun and Luna, 2012;Kavanaugh et al., 2012;Snead, 2013); Asian
countries, especially Korea (Khan et al., 2014;Kuzma, 2010); China (Zheng, 2013); and
North Africa (Abdelsalam et al., 2013). At the same time, researchers also studied
social media use in local government in Europe (Bonsón et al., 2012) and the USA
(Mossbergers et al., 2013;Oliveira and Welch, 2013). Furthermore, researchers paid
EL
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