An Empirical Investigation on the Adoption of e-Government in Developing Countries: The Case of Jordan

Abstract

While e-Government has the potential to improve public administration effectiveness as well as efficiency by increasing convenience, performance and accessibility of different government services to citizens, the success of these initiatives is dependent not only on government support, but also on citizens’ willingness to accept and adopt those e-government services. Although there is a great body of literature that discuss e-Government in developed countries, e-government in developing countries, in general, and Arab countries, in particular, has not received equal attention. The objective of this study is to determine the factors that influence the adoption of e-government services in a developing country, namely Jordan. An extended version of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is utilized as the theoretical base of this study. Overall, the study proposes that citizens’ perceptions about e-Government services influence their attitude towards adopting e-government initiatives. A survey collected data from 853 online users of Jordan’s e-government services. Using partial least squares (PLS) of structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis technique, the results show that all the four factors, namely: Perceived Credibility, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Computer Self Efficacy have significant effect on the adoption of e-government services in Jordan. Moreover, the study findings show that Perceived Ease of Use as the most important factor in predicting Jordanian citizens’ adoption of e-government services. The research limitations, implications for research and practice are discussed.