Open government and citizen participation: an empirical analysis of citizen expectancy towards open government data
| Author | Michael Rösch,Jan C. Weyerer,Bernd W. Wirtz |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852317719996 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Open government and citizen
participation: an empirical analysis
of citizen expectancy towards
open government data
Bernd W. Wirtz
German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Germany
Jan C. Weyerer
German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Germany
Michael Ro
¨sch
German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Germany
Abstract
Citizens are at the heart of open government, and their participation represents a fun-
damental principle of the latter. Despite their essential role and the great potential bene-
fits open government holds for the public, challenges of use among citizens persist.
Previous empirical research has scarcely addressed these issues from a citizen perspec-
tive. This study investigates the determinants of open government data use by citizens in
Germany. Our results indicate that ease of use, usefulness, as well as transparency, par-
ticipation and collaboration expectancies significantly determine citizens’ intention to use
open government data, which in turn positively affects their word-of-mouth intention.
Overall, the findings not only contribute to our understanding of citizen behavior in the
context of open government research, especially shedding light on the key aspects of
citizens’ usage intention, but also provide implications for both researchers and
practitioners.
Points for practitioners
Citizen-based use of open government data (OGD) has multiple facets that practi-
tioners should be aware of. Public administration needs to take account of the import-
ant role of accessibility and usability in providing OGD services, with the objective of
meeting the major challenge of enabling equal access for all populations via appropriate
channels and customization. The content-related preparation of OGD services should
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2019, Vol. 85(3) 566–586
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852317719996
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Corresponding author:
Bernd W. Wirtz, German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Chair for Information and
Communication Management, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Str. 2, 67346 Speyer, Germany.
Email: Ls-wirtz@uni-speyer.de
seek to enhance transparency, participation and collaboration, raising and shaping
respective expectations among citizens. Finally, practitioners should pay particular
attention to the opportunities and risks associated with word-of-mouth communication
in the context of OGD.
Keywords
citizen use, e-democracy, empirical analysis, open government, structural equation
model, word of mouth
Introduction
The rise of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in recent
years has laid the foundation for a new era of democracy that is capable of leveling
up the transparency of governmental action, the political participation of citizens
and the collaboration between governments and citizens. These three aspects are
widely regarded as the principles that constitute the concept of open government
(Wirtz and Birkmeyer, 2015), which rapidly gained significant attention from the
public and the scientific community. According to Geiger and von Lucke (2012:
266), open government refers to the ‘transparency, participation and collaboration
of the state towards third actors like the economy or the citizenship’. This attitude
of the government manifests itself in the provision of open government data
(OGD) through governmental online platforms like data.gov in the US, data.
gov.uk in the UK and govdata.de in Germany, making OGD an essential part
of open government as a whole.
OGD refers to ‘non-personal data sets that the general public can access’ and ‘that
in itself is not only the publication of data, but also include users’ feedback so as to
improve governmental performance and mechanisms for monitoring’ (Parycek
et al., 2014: 81). This implies that OGD has the same underlying principles as
open government and the former can be seen as the actual implementation instru-
ment for the latter. Thus, both terms are basically equivalent to each other with the
exception that OGD represents a manifestation of open government. However, we
deliberately use the term OGD to operationalize the dependent construct citizens’
usage intention because it reflects a more concrete usage behavior and therefore
appears to be more suitable for inquiry than open government use in general.
Despite its various benefits (Janssen et al., 2012) as well as significant invest-
ments by public administration (Evans and Campos, 2013), open government faces
several challenges regarding use and its full potential has not yet been exploited.
Against this background, the question arises as to what drives citizens’ intention to
use OGD. Previous research has strongly focused on technological, organizational
and data-related issues, rather neglecting citizen-based aspects (Janssen et al., 2012;
Wirtz and Birkmeyer, 2015). Although previous research implies that citizen-based
aspects, such as dissatisfaction resulting from negative open government experi-
ences or lack of knowledge that may inhibit the use of open government
Wirtz et al. 567
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