Abstract
Ever since international emergence of the Internet, huge amounts of money have been invested on e-Government globally. Nevertheless, many African countries have recorded unsuccessful eGovernment initiatives. Optimal results are not exclusively dependent on technological innovation but combination of technologies and active participation of citizens. There is plethora of qualitative discussions on eGovernment with inadequate substantial quantitative study on the influence of trust on the adoption of eGovernment services in African developing economies. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the Web Trust model was integrated to investigate citizens' intention to use eGovernment services. Data relating to the constructs were collected from 310 respondents that participated in this study. Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectation, Facilitating Conditions and Trusting belief emerged as significant determinants of intention to use eGovernment services. Lastly, practical implications of the results are reported with discussion for further studies.
TopBackground
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) was initiated by the Nigerian government as a passage for eGovernment to bring government closer to its citizens and facilitate national strategies for the spread of e-society / e-government (NITDA, 2001;Obasanjo, 2003, 2004). The expectation of the eGovernment initiatives is to use Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) for breaking “barriers of hierarchical traditions, secrecy, and bureaucracies” (Obasanjo,2004;p1) associated with public services. Numbers of eGovernment initiatives were rolled out to prepare citizens for the change towards eGovernment, encourage citizens to use eGovernment applications and build trust in citizens to reduce future resistance (Ifinedo,2007). The implementation of eGovernment was also foreseen as a way to curtail the effect of corrupt practices as eGovernment initiatives were employed in India to combat corruption (Ifinedo,2007). Also, e-government initiatives were expected to improve culture, transparency and accountability in the country.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Performance Expectancy (PE): The degree to which an individual believes that using a computerised system will assist him or her in increasing his or her job performance.
Effort Expectancy (EE): The degree of ease associated with use of the computer systems.
Structural Equation Modeling (SEM): Class of methodologies that seeks to represent hypothesis about summary statistics derived from empirical measurements in terms of smaller numbers of “structural” parameters defined by a hypothesized underlying model.
Institution Based Trust (IBT): The level to which an individual believes structural conditions are good enough to support his or her success.
Trusting Belief (TB): An individual’s confidence that the trade partner shall fulfill his or her transactional obligations as expected by the member.
Social Influence (SI): The degree to which an individual sees that important others believe he should use the new computer system or technology.
Facilitating Condition (FC): The degree to which an individual believes that organizational and technical infrastructures are available to support the use of the system.
Disposition to Trust (DTT): An individual’s tendency to be willing to depend on others.
Behavioural Intention (BI): The degree to which people are willing to perform a specific behaviour towards the use of technology.