Predictors for e-government adoption: integrating TAM, TPB, trust and perceived risk
| Published date | 06 February 2017 |
| Pages | 2-20 |
| Date | 06 February 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-08-2015-0141 |
| Author | Qijun Xie,Wei Song,Xiaobao Peng,Muhammad Shabbir |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Predictors for e-government
adoption: integrating TAM, TPB,
trust and perceived risk
Qijun Xie, Wei Song and Xiaobao Peng
School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, China, and
Muhammad Shabbir
University of Management Sciences and Information Technology,
Kotli, Pakistan
Abstract
Purpose –The present research aims to identify determinants for citizen’ behavioural adoption of
e-government, explore relationships among these variables and investigate whether the proposed model can
provide a more comprehensive manner to understand the adoption of e-government.
Design/methodology/approach –First, a survey is administered to collect data, then the Cronbach’s
alpha is assessed for internal consistency of measurement scales; second, conrmatory factor analysis is
conducted to evaluate the measurement model; nally, a structural equation model is used to test the proposed
hypotheses and explore the determinants of e-government adoption.
Findings –Results indicate that the proposed model is a stable model with powerful explanatory of
variation. In addition, some new relationships in the e-government context are found, whose disposition to
trust has positive effect on social norms, whereas perceived risk negatively inuences perceived behaviour
control. Moreover, other key dominants have been investigated.
Originality/value –The ndings have enabled us to better understand factors affecting intention and also
provided a solid theoretical research model for future study.
Keywords Theory of planned behaviour, Trust, e-Government, Technology acceptance model,
Perceived risk
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Background
Information technology (IT) advancement has resulted in the development of e-government
with an increasing impact on the improvement of the government’s capability to provide
services to individuals and organizations. Moving towards e-government has become an
ultimate top agenda for many countries. Use of e-government services, which is measured by
adoption, mostly determines the success for government to citizens (Ozkan and Kanat, 2011).
According to a United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs report, all 193
member countries had national websites in 2014; however, the adoption of the majority was
The authors would like to thank the editor (Jiangping Chen) and three anonymous referees for their
valuable comments and suggestions, which led to signicant improvements in the paper. The authors
would also like to thank Yanting Zhu and Xue Zhang for their advice. This work was supported by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 71202054, the Natural Science
Foundation of Anhui under Grant No. 1508085QG143.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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EL
35,1
2
Received 5 August 2015
Revised 25 February 2016
9 April 2016
8 May 2016
Accepted 3 June 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 1, 2017
pp.2-20
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-08-2015-0141
not high, at only 50 per cent (UNDESA, 2014). In China, adoption is a big issue of
e-government development.
The development of e-government in China can be traced to the early 1990s. After a set of
explorations in IT, some central ministries started to introduce their own networks. The
Ministry of Post and Telecommunications established their own website in 1993, whereas
the Ministry of Electronics Industry joined the market later. The Chinese Government then
put forward The Golden Projects for applying IT to promote the development of economy
and commerce (Holliday and Yep, 2005;Noesselt, 2014). Although these projects mainly paid
attention to business and commerce, a substantial plan covering all areas called the
Government Online Project was initiated in 1999 (Ma et al., 2005).
In the Chinese Government’s efforts, 80 per cent of the state’s organizations were put
online by the end of 2000, whereas 80 per cent of the municipal government’s agency services
were put online by the end of 2005. Because of massive investment, as of 2015, the number of
government websites was 56,938, which was more than double the number in 2005 (CNNIC,
2016). The E-Government Development Index (EGDI) of China was in the seventieth position
among 193 countries in 2014 (UNDESA, 2014). Though e-government in China is good, there
are some issues, such as distinct regional disparities (Wu and Bauer, 2010) and low adoption
(UNDESA, 2014). There are a lot of reasons behind the low adoption, such as institutional,
political, contextual and socioeconomic barriers; usefulness; lack of trust; and security
(Manoharan, 2012;Nam, 2014;Savoldelli et al., 2014). Because of the abovementioned
reasons, it is extremely important to investigate the factors inuencing adoption.
Motivations and purposes
Numerous researchers have developed a lot of models to explain the adoption of
e-government. The two most famous models are: the technology adoption model (TAM)
developed by Davis (1989) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) proposed by Ajzen
(1991). Many scholars have extended these two models (Hung et al., 2013;Lian, 2015;Lin
et al., 2011;Susanto and Goodwin, 2013). Trust and risk as two determinants are often
introduced to TAM or TPB. Some previous studies link trust to either TAM in e-business
(Gefen et al., 2003) or TPB in e-government (Hung et al., 2006;Hung et al., 2013), whereas a
few studies integrated trust with these two models (Wu and Chen, 2005). Regarding studies
assessing perceived risk (PR), introducing it to either TAM or TPB also occurs (Lee, 2009). In
fact, few studies integrate both trust and PR to TAM and TPB in the e-government context.
Therefore, this research focuses on these aspects for a better understanding of e-government.
Over the past ten years, there have been some empirical studies assessing e-government
in China. “There is a general mismatch between what the governments wish to provide
online with what the communities see value in”, which may lead to low usage of
e-government (Tan et al., 2013, p. 3). To get empirical reasons for low adoption, Zhang et al.
(2009) used a model extension to nd that perceived t inuenced users’ evaluation of
e-government systems, regarding the special element of Hexie (the concept of social
harmony) in Chinese culture as one of the reasons. According to previous research in China,
technological, organizational and environmental factors can affect e-government adoption
(Jiang et al., 2011;Shao et al., 2015;Zheng et al., 2012). In addition, some studies have
considered trust factors (Jiang et al., 2010,2011) and factors of service quality (Guan et al.,
2012). It has been shown that factors during and after the initial stage may be different
(Zhang et al., 2011). Yang and Li (2014) provided an overview of factors inuencing
e-government adoption. In general, a few studies have introduced a good model to better
understand e-government in China.
3
e-Government
adoption
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