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Research shows that by enabling innovation in public services, government use of mobile applications or “apps” provides new opportunities for better governance and improved customer satisfaction (Gil-Garcia, Helbig, and Ojo, 2014). Mobile government can be defined as the use of mobile and wireless communication technologies, such as mobile apps, by government to deliver information to citizens and businesses and receive information from them (Ntaliani, Costopoulou, and Karetsos, 2008). The use of these falls squarely in what has been called “m-government,” This contact channel provides a good way for governments to provide less expensive alternatives to data dissemination and access through smartphones, enabling citizens to obtain information and access public services through the mobile apps (Ohemeng and Ofosu-Adarkwa, 2015).
The purpose of this paper is to examine influences on citizen satisfaction with mobile apps contracted for use by government for citizen interactions. This is important because, prior research shows that e-government website contacts are related to citizen satisfaction with government in general (Cohen, 2006; Reddick and Zheng, 2017). Satisfaction is particularly important for governments that want to use mobile apps to increase civic engagement with government and improve public service delivery (Ingrams, 2015).
This paper looks at a relatively new phenomenon in an understudied context. The e-government literature has not studied existing, private mobile apps as a contracted platform for government service delivery communications. The literature largely has failed to distinguish between citizen satisfaction with bespoke mobile apps developed by government that are related to its own business and multi-purpose mobile apps that are used broadly across the public and private sectors. In addition, neither has been examined in the context of a fast-growing developing country such as China (Eom, Lee, and Kim, 2012), as this study does.
There are two dominant theories of contracting out to found in the privatization literature in the public administration literature. The most commonly cited theory is public choice which begins from a hierarchical relationship among two actors when a principal (government) hires an agent (contractor) to perform a specific task or service (Brown, Potoski, and Van Slyke, 2006). This theory anticipates that a self-interested agent will focus on reducing costs to generate the most profits and thus will “shirk” in some way in the specific performance. This theory assumes individual welfare maximizing behavior by both parties. The second more recently discussed theory in privatization research is stewardship (Davis, Schoorman, and Donaldson, 1997). Unlike public choice theory, stewardship posits a lateral relationship between two actors (government and contractor) collaborating to achieve a common good by a specific task or service. This theory expects that a mutuality of interest will lead the agent and government to construct trust and align public and private value. This theory assumes collective behavior of both government and the contracted contractor.
This paper applies the public choice and stewardship theories to government contracting for the use of mobile apps and citizens’ satisfaction with these apps. Through a statistical analysis of survey data in China, evidence is found that citizens seem more satisfied when local government contracts to use mobile apps from contracted vendors rather than using those developed by the government. One question left unanswered by this fact alone is the degree to which either public choice or stewardship theories can help explain this difference. In keeping with the foregoing, the following research question is stated, (RQ).