Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
The application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the administration of public sector and governmental agencies particularly concerning improving the delivery of public services is termed e-government. E-government is also considered as the means through which the government and its public sector agencies interact with citizens and businesses in terms of exchange of information, public services and democratic engagement through the powerful medium of ICT (Bwalya, Chris, & Mandla, 2010; Gomes & Laureano, 2018). The implementation of e-government has many benefits which include the simplification of access to government official documents and data, efficient and cost-effective delivery of public services (Alryalat, Rana, & Dwivedi, 2020; Cordelia, 2007; Ntulo & Otike, 2013). It can also ensure transparency and minimize corruption, availability of 24-hour services without physical demarcation and enhance communication or interaction between government and citizens (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Ciborra, 2009; Ntulo & Otike, 2013).
The factors influencing the demand side of e-government has been studied over a decade now. The demand side of e-government has to do with the uptake issues relating to the adoption of e-government services. Studies such as Gauld, Goldfinch, and Horsburgh (2010) and Kunstelj, Jukić, and Vintar (2007) have explored the e-government adoption issues from the demand side. From the demand side of e-government, factors such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived risk (Mou, Shin, & Cohen, 2017; Santhanamery & Ramayah, 2018), and performance expectancy, effort expectancy, security issues and social influence (Ismailova, 2017; Mansoori, Sarabdeen, & Tchantchane, 2018; Rabaa'i, 2017), have been explored about their impact on the decision of users to engage in the use of e-government services. Also, service quality dimensions (Khanra & Joseph, 2017a, 2017b; Yaghoubi & Rigi, 2017) and trust issues and national culture (Merhi, 2018; Nam, 2018) have been explored. Among these factors, the issue of trust which is the main concern for this current study has been explored in two directions. The first direction has to do with trust in government and the second is trust in the internet (Alzahrani, Al-Karaghouli, & Weerakkody, 2017, 2018). Whilst trusts in respect of these two directions have been explored in the literature, there is a little study that has examined the impact of political trust on the adoption of e-government services.