To better understand the use intensity of e-government service offerings among citizens, a considerable number of studies have examined correlations between various attitudinal constructs related to such offerings and citizens’ service adoption (intentions). This investigational paper aims to take a different angle by exploring associations between a set of 11 objectively identifiable household and individual behavioral and socio-demographic characteristics on the one side and three levels of e-government services use on the other.
The empirical analysis is based on survey responses of a random sample of 17,012 individuals residing in Germany.
Ordinal logistic regression analysis suggests that citizens with low use levels of public e-service offerings are most likely younger male persons with low levels of computer literacy, internet affinity and education, who have a migration background and live in small mid-level-income households located in rural communities.
The findings imply that public institutions may find it difficult to rapidly raise e-government acceptance by distributing only “technocratic” information explaining various service options. Public authorities should consider supplementing “pure” information programs by measures which ensure that the software of e-government service platforms is designed in a way guaranteeing a very high level of “usability”. Furthermore, they should analyze whether the benefits of providing e-government services in specific foreign languages outweigh the costs of such a service extension. If this is the case, an easy-to-use software menu item should be introduced which enables citizens to switch to another common foreign language.
The contribution of this paper results from the analysis of a set of objective predictors of e-government service use in a large random sample of citizens residing in Germany, whereas most prior studies are based on surveys of small convenience samples in other countries.
