Factors influencing e-government adoption in Pakistan

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify critical factors that enable citizens to adopt e-Government services in a society which is at a rudimentary stage of e-Government adoption. To achieve the objective of the research study, an integrated conceptual model has been proposed and validated which is based on sound theoretical conditions, keeping in view the local context of Pakistani society. Design/methodology/approach - An integrated conceptual model is proposed highlighting a comprehensive set of potential factors influencing the adoption of e-Government services. The conceptual model was developed using related literature review and also by conducting expert reviews with government officials, academic researchers and software engineers in Pakistan. Findings - From expert reviews, the results indicate that awareness, trust in the internet and trust in the government are the significant variables specific to the context of Pakistani society. The results of this study prove that awareness is a significant variable having influence on the citizens' intention to use e-Government services, either to get information or to perform a transaction using the government web site. Information quality is found to be a significant variable when getting information from the government website. Perceived ease of use, service quality and transaction security are significant variables which influence the citizens' intention to perform transactions with the government. Research limitations/implications - An integrated conceptual model is a robust way to explore the key factors that have great influence on e-Government adoption. The target respondents for this study are internet users. In future, the research work will be extended by including technology divide citizens called offline respondents, i.e. less frequent internet users. The results of online and offline respondents are compared so that the perception of technology divide citizens may also be included to identify the factors influencing the adoption of e-Government services. Practical implications - The key findings are useful for policy makers and decision makers, for a real understanding of the needs of the citizens. The proposed model can be used as a guideline for e-Government strategy formulation and implementation for the Government of Pakistan. Originality/value - To address the originality, an integrated conceptual model is proposed to overcome the shortcomings of the previous models by adding factors and their respective variables to make the model more comprehensive. Later, the proposed conceptual model is customized and also validated according to the local context of Pakistani society.