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Top1. Introduction
E-government is the usage of information technologies by public institutions to alter relations with businesses, citizens, and other government institutions (The World Bank Group, 2002). It allows to improve administrative efficiency, improve public services, improve trust and confidence in government, open government capabilities, improve social value and well-being, and improve ethical behavior and professionalism (Twizeyimana & Andersson, 2019). There are different e-government models (G2C, G2B, G2G, etc.), however, this research focuses on government to citizens (G2C) adoption only. The importance of this focus stems from the following important perspectives.
Even though e-government portals have been around for more than two decades, their usage by individuals is still a hot research topic. For example, Palvia et al. (2017) analyzed key topics published in three top journals (I&M, EJIS and MISQ) and found e-government research to be ranked fifth in the EJIS, nineteenth in I&M, and twentieth in MISQ. In addition, there is an abundance of published research in this area that portrays a gloomy picture about the low-level usage and satisfaction with e-government initiatives (Harfouche, 2010). Furthermore, the use of e-government websites among individuals is still a serious issue as most are heavily involved in online social networks, e-commerce, and e-banking transactions, yet they hesitate using e-government services (Harfouche & Robbin, 2012), which has led to an increased risk of failure of these projects (Heeks, 2003; Dada, 2006) and their expected returns on investment (United Nations, 2010; Maharaj & Munyoka, 2019). Accordingly, most government efforts go towards boosting acceptance and continuous use of e-government websites by the different stakeholders.
Prior studies have investigated a diverse range of factors that affect intention to reuse (IR). However, while several studies included both user trust (UT) and perceived risks (PR) (Horst et al., 2007; Lean et al., 2009; Bélanger & Carter, 2008; Colesca, 2009; Liu & Zhou, 2010; Horsburgh et al., 2011; Rehman et al., 2012b; Ejdys et al., 2019; Maharaj & Munyoka, 2019) to date, research has left significant gaps in our comprehension of IR e-government from the perspective of PR, UT and their relationship to IR.
First, most prior e-government studies where dominated by TAM (Alzahrani et al., 2017; Rana et al., 2015a) and few studies used the Information System Success (ISS) model (Delone & McLean, 2003). While system quality is an important component of ISS, compared to information quality (IQ) and service quality (SVQ), SQ received limited attention, and its effect on both user satisfaction (US) and perceived value (PV) produced confusing and mixed results (Akram, Malik, Shareef, & Goraya, 2019; Rana, Dwivedi, Williams, & Weerakkody, 2015b; Stefanovic, Marjanovic, Delić, Culibrk, & Lalic, 2016; 2008; Veeramootoo, Nunkoo, & Dwivedi, 2018; Wang & Liao, 2008).