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Service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention regarding e-government: Empirical evidence from China
Journal Pre-proof Service Quality, Perceived Value, and Citizens’ Continuous-Use Intention Regarding E-government: Empirical Evidence from China Yan Li, Huping Shang
PII:
S0378-7206(17)30691-2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103197
Article Number:
103197
Reference:
INFMAN 103197
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INFMAN
Received Date:
5 August 2017
Revised Date:
28 July 2019
Accepted Date:
12 August 2019
Please cite this article as: Li Y, Shang H, Service Quality, Perceived Value, and Citizens’ Continuous-Use Intention Regarding E-government: Empirical Evidence from China, Information and amp; Management (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103197
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Service Quality, Perceived Value, and Citizens’ Continuous-Use Intention Regarding E-government: Empirical Evidence from China
Yan Li Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science,
Email: [email protected]
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Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China PR
Huping Shang (Corresponding author)
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Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China PR
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Email: [email protected]
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This study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71704018), Key Project of Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education,
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China (Grant No. 18JZD047), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
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Universities of China (Grant No. DUT18RC(4)022; 63192402).
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Abstract Citizens’ low continuous-use intention has become a great challenge for the development of e-government in China. This study has developed a chain model of egovernment service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention to explain the relationship between government website service quality and perceived value, as well as how that relationship influences citizens’ reuse intention. Using data
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collected from a survey of 1,650 citizen users living in one direct-controlled municipality and four high-population cities in China, this study verifies the
components of e-government service quality through partial least squares (PLS)
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analysis and then tests the proposed concept model using structural equation modeling.
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The results reveal that the concept of e-government service quality has eight contributing dimensions: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information
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quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness. Perceived service value is
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a powerful mediator between service quality and citizens’ continuous-use intention. The
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intention to use is a consequence of service quality, service value, and satisfaction.
Keywords：e-government, government websites, citizens’ continuous-use intention,
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service quality, perceived value
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Introduction Continuous-use intention, one of the most primary postadoption behaviors, is a fundamental and critical indicator of users’ loyalty. It is seen as the key to the success of e-government programs because investments in e-government are cost effective and will only achieve maximal benefit if citizens engage in continuous use (Bhattacherjee, 2001; Hu et al., 2009; Limayem et al., 2003).
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Of all the factors that influence users’ loyalty, service quality and perceived value
are the ones that have been proved most consistently to enhance users’ continuous-use intention (Hardeep and Kumari, 2011; Le and Thuy, 2012; Rasheed and Abadi, 2014).
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Citizens will be discouraged from reusing an e-government system if they have
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experienced poor service quality and decide that the service is worthless or valueless, and their reactions directly determine the legitimacy of investments in e-government
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infrastructure and programs (Al-Hujran et al., 2015). Therefore, developers are striving
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to overcome the problems that prevent citizens from reusing e-government services. This situation highlights the importance of understanding the contributors to quality
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and the antecedents of service value relevant to e-government service, investigating the mechanism whereby service quality affects the service value of e-government, and
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examining the mediating role perceived service value (PSV) plays in the relation between service quality and citizens’ intention to reuse online public services. Prior research has modeled service value as a mediator between service quality and behavioral intention to reuse a system or a service (Kettinger et al., 2009). Although many researchers use classic technology acceptance models (e.g., information systems 3
[IS] continuance model, expectation-confirmation theory, and IS success model) when examining the factors that influence citizens’ continuous use of government websites (Jen and Hung, 2010; Hung et al. 2013), few take a comprehensive view of service quality and service value or look at the empirical relationships among the service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention (Alford and O’Flynn, 2008). This paper discusses this research shortcoming by addressing the following research
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questions (RQs):
RQ1: What attributes contribute to citizens’ overall perceptions of e-government service quality?
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RQ2: How does service value mediate the relationship between service quality and
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citizens’ continuous-use intention?
RQ3: What factors motivate citizens to continue to use e-government services?
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To answer these questions, this research develops a continuous-use intention model
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of e-government that integrates the quality-value-loyalty chain model and the IS continuance model. In our new model, service quality is measured using a formative
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approach. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: the next section develops the research model and major hypotheses, reviewing relevant literature in the process.
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Section 3 covers methodology, and Section 4 provides data analysis. Section 5 discusses findings, and Section 6 highlights the paper’s contributions, implications, and limitations, as well as directions for future research.
Research model and hypothesis development 4
In the subsections below, we explain how we identified the eight attributes that contribute to service quality in our model, describe the characteristics of each attribute, and develop our hypotheses. Attributes contributing to e-government service quality From a user’s perspective, e-government service quality can be defined by how well online public services provided by government websites meet the user’s
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requirements (Tan and Benhasat, 2013) and by the extent to which government websites
facilitate efficient and effective information search and online transactions as well as communication between government and citizens (Blut, 2016). E-government service
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quality reflects the sum of features and attributes associated with its performance of a
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particular public service (Baker, 2009; Lindgren and Jansson, 2013). In studying e-government service quality, scholars and practitioners try to evaluate
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how well government websites meet citizens’ needs, and they measure the quality of
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the services provided. Unfortunately, despite extensive studies on e-government service quality, there is no consensus on evaluation criteria. Table 1 presents various
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measurement dimensions and objects of evaluation from the literature.
Insert Table 1 here.
Earlier studies have misinterpreted two aspects in their conceptualization and measurement of e-government service value, namely, technical performance quality and service function quality. Ancarani (2005) and Tan and Benhasat (2009) emphasize 5
a comprehensive understanding and make a necessary distinction between these two sorts of quality attributes. With the aim of developing citizen-centric, quality-driven principles in the design of e-government services from the demand-side, Tan et al. (2013) extend Ancarani’s (2005) analysis of e-public service and conceptualize e-government service quality as a synthesis of service content elements and service delivery elements. Specifically,
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service content quality refers to the service functions available in government websites, and service delivery quality reflects the technology supporting the service function (Lindgren and Jansson, 2013).
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Using the customer service life cycle as a guide, Tan et al. (2013) identify 16
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service content quality attributes expressed in the following three dimensions: (1) Ownership, which refers to the service functions used to promote citizens’ participation
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in public service development and public discussion. It consists of seven attributes
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(training, monitoring, upgrading, scheduling, delegating, negotiating, and evaluating). (2) Requirement, which refers to service content that enables citizens to determine and
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obtain the services they need. It can be broken down into two attributes, namely, the needing function and the customizing function. (3) Acquisition, which consists of
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service content that can help citizens to carry out desired transactions, including sourcing, trying, ordering, paying, tracking, accepting, and authorizing. Further, by reviewing 186 related articles published in major management and information science conference proceedings and journals, Tan et al. (2013) select six attributes to measure service delivery quality, namely, accessibility, navigability, 6
interactivity, interoperability, adaptability, and security. In total, their investigation of e-government service quality contains 22 quality attributes—the most comprehensive measurement of service quality in existing literature. This research seeks to build on and clarify Tan et al.’s (2013) operationalization of e-government service equality by integrating the service content attributes and the service delivery attributes, although we use different descriptive labels. We regard e-
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government as a method, supported by information technology, providing online
services to meet citizens’ requirements (Salunke et al., 2011; Wang, C., 2014; Al-Hujran et al., 2015) and postulate that a high-quality e-government service must be
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“functionally advanced enough and technically easy [for citizens] to operate”
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(Grönroos et al., 2000, p.244).
We henceforth refer to two classifications of service quality, that is, technical
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performance quality, which refers to the efficiency of government websites as a delivery
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channel for public services, and service function quality, which describes how well the content provided by government websites achieves promised outcomes and satisfies
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citizens’ requirements.
To identify attributes of service quality that are supportive of a formative construct,
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we adjusted Tan et al.’s (2013) 22-attribute scale to our research context. 1 Three independent coders, one each from mainland China, Vietnam, and Malaysia, were asked to visit municipal government portals in these countries. The portals represent the
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This adjustment procedure is advocated by Tan et al. (2013). In their work, they adapted the customer service life cycle model to the domain of e-government by examining government websites in the United States, Canada, and Singapore. 7
average level of global e-government development according to the E-Government Development Index (EGPI) published by the United Nations from 2012 to 2016 (United Nations, 2012, 2014, 2016). A detailed introduction to Tan et al.’s (2013) work was given to each coder to ensure that they understood the 22 attributes properly. Each coder was then instructed to check whether the service functions from Tan et al.’s (2013) model were applicable
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to genuine functions that exist on the e-government portal they were examining. They were also told to note service functions that could not be exactly classified in
accordance with Tan et al.’s (2013) framework. Depending on analysis of their feedback,
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8 of 22 quality attributes were selected. The others were deleted because of absence of
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corresponding function in practice. Additionally, because of requirements of the State Council for the development of municipal government portals in China, we adapted the
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measurement scale to match the evaluation index proposed by the General Office of the
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State Council (GOCSC). The GOCSC’s (2015) scale includes four attributes, namely, website usability (home page availability and link availability), information updating
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(home page and basic information updating), interactive responsiveness (government advisory columns and interactive interview columns on websites), and service
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practicability (integrity of practical guidance, availability of attachments, and accessibility of the online system). In the end, our eight attributes, which cover both the technical performance and the service function of e-government, are system quality, reliability, security, accessibility (Horan et al., 2006; Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012; Qutaishat, 2012), 8
information quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness (Baker, 2009; Hu et al., 2014; Omar et al., 2011; Qutaishat, 2012). Technical performance quality The first four attributes (system quality, reliability, security, and accessibility) are related to technical dimensions supporting service delivery in government websites. System quality
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System quality refers to a user-friendly arrangement of the physical attributes of
government websites, such as usability, website design, navigability, and operation modules (Glassey and Glassey, 2004; Omar et al., 2011). Unlike face-to-face
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interactions, citizens’ web interactions with the government take place in the presence
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of the service providers and actual service facilities that create the web attributes and design features that determine citizens’ quality evaluations of the e-government
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services (Tan et al., 2013). Blut (2016) claims that system quality is the first determinant
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of e-government service quality and of major significance during the early stage of online service delivery, and that citizens’ perceptions of e-government service quality
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always begin with a visual assessment of the quality of the government website system. Various studies have provided empirical evidence for the pivotal role system quality
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plays in the overall service quality of a government website (Omar et al., 2011; Lindgren and Jansson, 2013). Reliability Reliability stands for the extent to which all the service functions operate normally and consistently, with problems that arise being solved in a timely manner 9
(Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009). It reflects citizens’ assessments of government website performance in providing correct and on-time delivery of the services they need (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2012; Omar et al., 2011). Parasuraman et al. (2005) consider reliability an essential contributor to online service quality because correct technical functioning of the site directly determines the success of service provision, and any disruptions will lower service efficiency and greatly cause inconvenience to
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users. Within the domain of e-government, especially for transactional services on government websites, the importance of reliability in explaining citizens’ perceptions
of service quality has been validated by empirical evidence in existing literature
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(Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012; Osman et al., 2014).
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Security
Security can be defined as the extent to which a government website safeguards
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itself from intrusion and attack by unauthorized individuals (Tan et al., 2013). As
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expected, as far as online public services are concerned, security is of the first importance to citizens, especially when dealing with public services involving personal
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privacy and financial transactions (Horan et al., 2006; Qutaishat, 2012; Blut, 2016). Security breaches on government websites, whether information leaks, financial losses,
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or malicious attacks, not only discourage the public from using online public services but also increase citizens’ dissatisfaction with the service quality of e-government systems (Stibbe, 2005; Tassabehj et al., 2007). Consistent with this argument, previous studies also observe that citizens’ perception of the security of government websites is an important antecedent variable for the acceptance of e-government, as well as an 10
important predictor of e-government service quality (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009; Shareef et al., 2011; Hu et al., 2014). Accessibility Accessibility can be described as the degree to which service functions on government websites are available to citizens with diverse physical limitations and different IT capacities (Jansen and Ølnes, 2004; Barnes and Vidgen, 2006). It is not to
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be confused with system quality, which covers physical attributes relating to how an e-
government system operates and how easily citizens can use it. One of the important objectives of e-government is to provide more inclusive public services for the entire
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population (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009). Hence, how well government
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websites ensure no segments of the public are excluded from the advantages of public e-services should be regarded as a necessary element in our understanding of service
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quality (Brebner and Parkinson, 2006).
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Service function quality
There are also four attributes (information quality, service capability, interactivity,
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and responsiveness) that relate to the business of providing what citizens require from online public service.
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Information quality
Information quality describes a government website’s ability to provide timely,
accurate, comprehensive, concise, and relevant information in line with citizens’ needs (Barnes and Vidgen, 2003; Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012). According to the service development stages of e-government discussed in different studies (Layne 11
and Lee, 2001; European Union, 2007), although e-government services have gradually developed from an original static stage characterized by unilateral information promulgation to an interactive phase in which they handle official business between the government and the public, information quality is still a vital component of high-quality online public service and a good user experience (Carter and Bélanger, 2005). Correctness and timeliness of information of government websites are crucial: a prior
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study has found that many government websites have failed to keep information
updated in a timely manner, even in countries with high e-government development levels (Qutaishat, 2012). As most citizens are unfamiliar with administrative tasks,
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providing them with useful information and explaining the procedures required to carry
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out transactions are of utmost importance (Grimsley and Meehan, 2007). Service capability
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Service capability describes the extent to which a government website provides
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content that satisfies citizens’ needs by assisting them in achieving desired goals (Tan et al., 2013; Hu et al., 2014). Service capability is critical in earning users’ positive
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assessment of service quality. High-quality online public services should enable citizens to enjoy the benefits of one-stop service by integrating, reorganizing, and optimizing e-
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government processes and integrating the functions of different departments on the basis of work flow. Furthermore, to ensure the accountability and transparency, the process of service completion should be trackable, and citizens should be informed of service status by official e-mail and texts sent from government websites staff (Omar et al., 2011). 12
Interactivity Interactivity is used to evaluate how well government websites involve citizens in public affairs and promote the public interest by providing various means of and opportunities for communications between the government and the citizens (Glassey and Glassey, 2004; Omar et al., 2011). For governments around the world, empowering citizens and fostering democracy are two major reasons for developing e-government
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(Glassey and Glassey, 2004), which can be an effective supplement to traditional
democracy. E-participation has great potential to enable citizens to influence public policies and services that affect their lives. Therefore, how well service providers
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involve the public and how well citizens can participate in public affairs through
Responsiveness
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government services (Qutaishat, 2012).
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government websites will definitely be a factor in their perception of the quality of e-
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Lastly, responsiveness covers how quickly a government website responds to citizens’ suggestions, opinions, and demands (Grimsley and Meehan, 2007; Baker,
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2009). According to the New Public Management theory, governments should try to exploit advanced technologies to improve their responsiveness to citizens’ interests and
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demands to provide citizen-oriented and result-oriented public service (Hood, 1995). Citizens always expect quicker and more effective responses from government institutions when they communicate their thoughts and needs through government websites than they do when they use older modes of communication. Listening to the voice of the citizenry is an inherent requirement of a responsible government (Qutaishat, 13
2012; Wang, C., 2014). Consequently, the degree to which government websites make it easier for citizens to express their civic needs and desires and to get a response will have a major influence on citizens’ assessment of those websites’ service quality. Although we strongly agree with the formulation of e-government service quality put forward by Lindgren and Jansson (2013) and Tan and his colleagues (2013) and, like them, conceptualize it using a formative approach, our research has several points
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of difference in the selection and development of first-order quality dimensions and in the development of higher order measurement of e-government service quality, as explained below.
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First, it should be noted that Tan et al.’s (2013) identification and selection of
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specific quality attributes are based on content analysis of advanced government websites in Canada, Singapore, and the United Sates—nations that are leaders in the
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development of global e-government (United Nations, 2016). The websites reviewed
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in Tan et al.’s (2013) work were designed to offer advanced service functions that may not be available in countries whose government websites are still in their early stage.
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We therefore did not include high-level functional attributes in our content analysis of the service function of government websites, and we modified the first-order
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dimensions proposed by Tan et al. (2013) to make them more applicable to our research object.
A second reason for our adjustment of the original first-order dimensions relates to the nature of the government websites we investigate. The government websites we examine are municipal government portals, whereas Tan et al. (2013) were examining 14
online public transaction systems. In China, a local government portal is expected to provide information search, online transaction capability, and a means of communication to encourage citizen participation. In other words, online transactions are only one of the core service functions performed by the local government portal. Clearly, different quality dimensions are needed to measure the qualities of government websites that are providing different services, and some of the overly detailed quality
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attributes relating to online transaction services in Tan et al.’s (2013) operationalization are obviously not applicable to this study.
Third, as mentioned above, the goal of Tan et al.’s (2013) research is to develop
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quality-driven design principles for e-government services; thus, they pay more
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attention to building a hierarchical model that links citizens’ perception of government website service quality to two complementary dimensions: service content and service
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delivery. The purpose of our research, by contrast, is to identify core attributes that
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influence citizens’ perception of e-government service quality and then to explore the mediating mechanism service value plays in the relationship between service quality
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and citizens’ continuous-use intention. Therefore, we will not focus on a holistic examination of service quality. In other words, our conception of service quality will
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not be as comprehensive as that of Tan et al. (2013) or other scholars, but it is enough to answer our RQs and to capture the essential features of the service and technical performance of government portals whose functions are still in the transition stage from the two-way communication to online transaction. Perceived service value of e-government to the public 15
Perceived value is the customer’s overall judgment of the utility of services or products based on perceptions of benefits gained in the trade-off between costs and benefits (Zeithaml, 1988). Private organizations create economic value by offering consumer products and services, while public organizations create public value by offering civil services, laws, policies, and regulations in a more sophisticated way (O’Flynn, 2007). Although customers evaluate private goods and services based on the
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trade-off between benefits and costs (Wang et al., 2005; Le and Thuy, 2012), citizens assess public services much more in terms of the services’ utility as well as by how well those services perform (Alford and O’Flynn, 2008; Cordella and Bonina, 2012).
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Citizens also take into consideration the policy objectives of the services and the
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legitimacy of the political performance represented in the service.
Furthermore, while profitability of e-services is a concern in business, most e-
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government services are nonprofit, and in many cases, users have no alternative to the
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service provided by the government—two salient differences that make it diffCUIlt to measure the value of e-government services in the same way one would measure the
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value of private e-services. For these reasons, the public’s evaluation of e-government service is based on judgment of service performance and whether the service meets
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their expectations rather than an assessment of performance-to-price ratio. More importantly, the value citizens expect from e-government services is vital.
According to Moore (1995), satisfying citizens’ needs and creating value for the public should be the core promise of government when it comes to public service provision. By that standard, the legitimacy of e-government lies mainly in its ability to create value 16
for citizens by delivering public services (Wang, F., 2014). In practice, government websites are a good way to create value for the public: they allow the government to share information, offer services conveniently and efficiently, and provide a wider platform for public participation (Al-Hujran et al., 2015; Karunasena and Deng, 2012). As highlighted by the United Nations (2003), “People express preferences, the government uses information and communications technology (ICT) to enhance its own
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capacity to deliver what people want, and eventually public value is created” (p. 5).
Therefore, citizens’ perception of value in the e-government context is highly dependent on the public value generated by the e-government service.
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In accordance with the above analysis, we define users’ PSV in this research as the
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value citizens place on e-government services’ improvement of government transparency, efficiency, and accountability, and on e-government services’ promotion
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of democratic participation and social equality. Citizens’ value perceptions reflect a
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trade-off between the public utilities generated by e-government services and the cost of acquiring the services (including personal sacrifice and public spending). In other
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words, service value can be identified as citizens’ assessment of the overall utility (both public benefits and personal gains) of e-government service.
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It is worth noting that the definition of service value proposed here is similar to the
concept of perceived usefulness in the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989) and performance expectations in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Although perceived usefulness and performance expectancy indicate the degree to which an individual believes that using an information system 17
will improve his or her job performance (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh et al., 2003), both of them emphasize the benefits (saving time, money, and effort; facilitating communication with the government) of the system for individual users, whereas our research lays stress not only on the personal utility gained from using e-government services but also on the public benefits generated by e-government system, such as a more transparent, accountable, and efficient government (Chatfield and Hujran, 2007;
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Yu, 2008), and a more just, democratic, and inclusive society (West, 2004; Harrison et al., 2012).
In much of the prior research exploring the conceptualization and measurement of
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PSV or the public value of e-government, service quality is seen as a component
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dimension of service value (Kearns, 2004; Golubeva, 2007; Heeks, 2008; Mills et al., 2010; Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015; Osmani, 2015; Ha, 2016). It
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is obvious that users’ perception of value created by e-government websites depends on
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their perceptions of the websites’ services, including information search, online transactions, and online communication between the government and the public; thus,
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we agree that service quality is as an essential component of value (Osmani and Mohamad, 2015; Ishmatova and Obi, 2009). However, against the argument that service
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quality is a component of service value (Ruiz et al., 2008), we regard the quality of service and the value of service as two interrelated but completely different concepts and measure them in different ways. As mentioned earlier, unlike the case with services in business world, there are often no alternatives to services provided by government websites, and service quality simply serves as the basis for service value, that is, the 18
perception of service value or public value results from a judgment regarding service quality (Wang, C., 2014; Grimsley and Meehan, 2007). In Moore’s (1995) review, public value is understood as the value that citizens and their representatives pursue in terms of strategic outcomes and experience of public services. In the context of e-government, service value should not be measured in terms of individual benefits from e-commerce services but instead in terms of citizens’
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aspirations in the political arena. Additionally, public service value is the outcome of governmentally produced benefits, so part of the public value stems from the direct utility of these benefits and another part from the fairness of the government’s
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production, service, and distribution and from the institutional capacity to meet citizens’
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requirements. This also means that the legitimacy of e-government largely rests on its ability to create values for citizens by producing outcomes, services, and trust
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(Grimsley and Meehan, 2007).
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As service value is of such importance, it is necessary to investigate how value is created in the process of e-government service delivery. Identifying value-generating
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mechanisms is the first step (Harrison et al., 2012). There are six types of value generators in e-government projects: namely financial, political, strategic, social,
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ideological, and stewardship impacts (Chang, E. et al., 2005; Harrison et al., 2012). The first four generators are related to citizens’ substantive individual interests and reflect their utilitarian, rational, and economic valuations, and the remaining two are related to intrinsic values or social and democratic outcomes and reflect citizens’ emotional and social valuation (Boksberger and Melsen, 2011). 19
This understanding of public value creation mechanisms in e-government projects is of great significance to this research, but it is not fully applicable for analyzing the public value of e-government service in China. E-government websites are a new tool for public service in China, and at present, their strategic, ideological, and stewardship impacts can barely be perceived by citizens. This makes it difficult for us to directly measure them. To address this problem, following Harrison et al.’s (2012) arguments,
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and consistent with Al-Hujran et al. (2015), Wang, F. (2014) suggested servicedominant analysis. Our research takes that suggestion and examines service-related
issues under the framework of the public value creation mechanism suggested by
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Moore (1995), focusing on three value determinants: efficiency, democracy, and
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inclusiveness.
Efficiency refers to citizens’ perception of the e-government system’s potential to
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save money, time, and efforts in the provision of public service. Citizens expect
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efficiency with respect to public expenditure (Moore, 1995); thus, efficiency is an indispensable component of the service value citizens derive from using the e-
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government system. Hence, we propose that: H1: The service value of e-government is influenced by the efficiency of government
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websites.
Democracy refers to citizens’ perception that e-government systems empower the
public. Supported by advanced information and communication technology, the citizens can communicate with their government and participate in public affairs in a more convenient and easier way (Amoretti, 2007). E-government has the potential to 20
offer citizens unprecedented empowerment and to make participation a reality (Kardan and Sadeghiani, 2011). Further, new features and forms of cyber communication, as well as the Internet’s role in instilling in the public a desire to know about the workings of government and to enjoy freedom, have forced governments to be more responsive, sensitive, and accountable and to make their processes more transparent (Ayanso et al., 2011). These are all of great significance for democratic development. Hence, we
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proposed that
H2: The service value of e-government is influenced by the greater democracy made possible by government websites.
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Inclusiveness refers to citizens’ perception that the e-government system increases
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the accessibility of public services and makes service delivery more egalitarian (Hornung et al., 2013). ICTs have the potential to break through the limitations of time
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and space and provide undifferentiated public services and unlimited information for
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every citizen regardless of his or her income, education level, gender, language, etc. (Alfonso, 2003; United Nations, 2005). The intersection of what ICTs offer with the
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need for public inclusiveness indicates that e-government has a central role to play in promoting equity and social inclusion (United Nations, 2005). Therefore, we propose
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that
H3: The service value of e-government is influenced by the increased inclusiveness
made possible by government websites. Conceptual model Previous research on citizens’ preadoption behavior toward government websites 21
has failed to provide a heuristic framework for understanding the interrelations among service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention (Carter and Bélanger, 2005; Lemuria and France, 2005; Alawadhi and Morris, 2008；Mahadeo, 2009; Al-Shafi and Weerakkody, 2010; Alshehri et al., 2012; Hung et al., 2013; Nam, 2014; Khattab et al., 2015). To fill this gap, this study develops a model to analyze the interaction between service quality and the perceived value of government websites, as
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well as the consequences of that interaction for users’ continuous-use intention from a post-adoption perspective. The model proposed in this study combines means-end chain theory with an e-government service quality evaluation model to gain a better
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understanding of users’ intention to continue to use government websites.
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Means-end chain theory is the most representative theory exploring the relationship between customers’ values and their behaviors, that is, how attributes of products or
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services affect customers’ perceptions of benefits or costs and how these perceptions
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match up with their values and affect their consumption decisions (Grunert and Grunert, 1995; Sun et al., 2009). The attribute-consequence-value connection is generally
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considered the basic driving force underlying consumer behavior (Kaciak, 2011a, 2011b).
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Based on the attribute-consequence-value chain theory, Zeithaml (1988) develop a
means-end model that captured the relationships among perceived quality, perceived value, and behavioral decisions (see Figure 1).
Insert Figure 1 here. 22
In Zeithaml’s model, perceived quality has a positive impact on customers’ perceived value, and perceived value, in turn, affects purchase intention positively, revealing the significance of the mediating effect of perceived value on the relationship between service quality and consumer behaviors (Pura, 2005; Ruiz et al., 2008; Lai et al., 2009; Yaşlıoğlu et al., 2013). Analogously, with citizens’ use of e-government
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websites, the formation of users’ reuse intention depends largely on the perceived value
of the service, and furthermore, perceived value is regarded both as a primary antecedent for customer loyalty and as a direct consequence of perceived service quality
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(Kuo et al., 2011). With the aim of exploring the relationships among perceived quality,
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perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use behavior vis-à-vis e-government, the current study adopts the quality-value-loyalty chain model of Parasuraman and Grewal
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(2000), redefining the dimension of service quality based on integration of several e-
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government service quality evaluation models.
The IS continuance model has been widely used to explore IS continuance as it
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was first developed by Bhattacherjee in 2001. Bhattacherjee (2001) revises and expands the expectation confirmation theory, integrating perceived usefulness from the
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technology acceptance model and users’ satisfaction to predict IS continuance intention (see Figure 2).
Insert Figure 2 here.
23
As shown in the figure, satisfaction and perceived usefulness can directly affect continuous-use intention, and confirmation can exert indirect impact on continuous-use intention by influencing perceived usefulness and satisfaction. With solid theoretical foundations, the IS continuance model has been used to explain post-adoption behavioral intention in various IS situations, including e-government (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Jiang, 2011), e-commerce (Chen, 2010), and e-learning (Limayem and
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Cheung, 2008). Existing research based on this model has validated that satisfaction is the strongest predictor of reuse intention, and the relationship between satisfaction and continuous-use intention has shown the highest consistency in different research
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contexts (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Chen, 2010; Jiang, 2011; Chen et al., 2012).
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According to Li and Liu (2014) and Bhattacherjee (2001), perceived usefulness and confirmation are essentially cognitive beliefs based on comparison of pre- and post-
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utility expectations. They are more changeable and biased than satisfaction, which
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derives directly from the actual use experience, that is, “user’s perception of usefulness will be adjusted upward because of their confirmed IS usage experience” (Li and Liu,
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2014, p. 1049). Thus, the decision on whether to continue to use an IS service depends more on satisfaction than it does on perceived usefulness and confirmation, resulting in
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the uncertainty of the relationship between perceived usefulness and confirmation, as well as their effects on IS continuance. Therefore, to improve the explanatory power of the variables in our model as much as possible, this research retains only satisfaction as the core antecedent of continuous-use intention and integrates it into the means-end chain model. 24
Enlightened by the means-end chain theory and the IS continuance model, the earlier literature reveals that higher satisfaction can dramatically increase customers’ loyalty as expressed through repurchasing intention (Anderson and Srinivasan, 2003; Horan et al., 2006; Chan et al., 2010), while later studies have found that satisfaction is no longer sufficient to attract customers to reuse or repurchase the e-service (Hu at al., 2009; Alruwaie et al., 2012), and it is perceived-value attributes rather than satisfaction
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or even service quality that drives customers’ loyalty (Chai et al., 2015).
In the field of e-government research, although enormous efforts have been made
to distinguish service quality from service value and satisfaction and to explore their
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effects on users’ behavioral intentions (Byun, 2011), few studies have incorporated the
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three important constructs in a model simultaneously and investigated their comparative influences on citizens’ continuous-use intention. However, given the vital
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role that service quality, service value, and satisfaction plays in forming users’ loyalty,
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it is clear that examining only one or two variables at a time, or analyzing only their incomplete effects, is likely to result in misunderstanding citizens’ decision making in
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the context of e-government. As argued by Cronin et al. (2000), these incomplete models will result in over- or underestimating the importance of one or more of the
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three variables.
There has been a consensus that high evaluations of service quality lead to favorable
value attributions and, in turn, positive value appraisals enhance satisfaction (Bhattacherjee, 2001). Theoretical foundation for these links have been laid down by the belief-attitude-intention-behavior framework (Xu et al., 2013) and subsequent 25
theories based this framework, such as the means-end chain theory in marketing research and the IS continuance model in IS literature. According to these theories, satisfaction is regarded as an object-based attitude that is a result of cognitive-oriented beliefs, including beliefs concerning service value and service quality (Alawneh et al., 2013). More specifically, citizens’ satisfaction with e-government—that is, citizens’
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assessment of how well e-government service has met their expectations—is strongly associated with their perceived value, as well as their cognition of service quality (Sørum, 2011). Additionally, as noted above, satisfaction is the strongest predictor of
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reuse intention, and the relationship between satisfaction and continuance has
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consistently been demonstrated in different research based on the IS continuance model (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Jiang, 2011; Chen et al., 2012). Alruwaie et al.’s (2012)
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analysis also supports the idea that citizens’ satisfaction directly promotes their
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continuous-use intentions and that electronic public service quality increases citizens’ reuse intentions indirectly by increasing their satisfaction with e-government services.
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Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed: H4: Citizens’ satisfaction has a positive impact on citizens’ intention to continue to
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use government websites.
H5: Citizens’ perceptions of service quality have a positive impact on citizens’
satisfaction with government websites. H6: Citizens’ perceptions of overall service value have a positive impact on citizens’ satisfaction with government websites. 26
The purpose and nature of a study determine the model’s structure and the variables’ setting, and as the purpose of this research is to explore service quality and service value implications, we focus on the conceptualization and measurement of service quality and service value, as well as investigating the mechanism of their effect on citizens’ behavioral intentions. The relationship among service quality, perceived value, and customers’
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continuous-use behavior has always been a hot issue in the academic field of marketing,
but it has not been fully considered or appropriately addressed in e-government research. In the means-end chain theory, perceived value plays an important role in connecting
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service quality to continuous consumption and is both a direct antecedent of repurchase
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intention and a direct consequence of service quality (Pura, 2005; Ruiz et al., 2008; Yaşlıoğlu et al., 2013). This contribution can be applied in the e-government sphere as
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follows.
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To begin with, the value users perceive in e-government is determined largely by their usage of e-government services and their perception of the quality of those
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services (O’Flynn, 2007; Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015). This study examines how the concrete structure of service quality affects different
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dimensions of perceived value (Rasheed and Abadi, 2014; Ruiz et al., 2008). Certainly, government websites with sound systems, rich and accurate information, user-oriented service design, easy availability, powerful safeguards, reliable operation, and interactive and responsive communication platforms should definitely enhance citizens’ perception of e-government’s intrinsic values. Therefore, the following hypotheses are 27
proposed: H7: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’ perceptions of the efficiency value generated by e-government services. H8: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’ perceptions of the democracy value generated by e-government services. H9: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’
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perceptions of the inclusiveness value generated by e-government services.
The behavioral consequences of customers’ perceptions of value have always been
a focus of marketing research. Perceived value is a key predictor of customer loyalty
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and, as noted above, can have a direct positive impact on customers’ repurchase
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intention. This has been widely supported by a large number of studies (Chang, E. et
Floh et al., 2014).
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al., 2005; Fassnacht and Köse, 2007; Yang and Jolly, 2009; Hardeep and Kumari, 2011;
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In the context of electronically provided services, analysis of technology acceptance models also shows the positive impact of users’ perceived value on their
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behavior intention. However, there is little research that explores the relationship between public value and e-government reusage (Omar et al., 2011; Osmani, 2015). In
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theory, the greater the users’ perception of the utility of e-government services, the stronger their intention to reuse the website should be. More specifically, citizens’ continuous-use intention should increase when they perceive that government websites are a valuable and useful means of obtaining information, when they perceive websites as offering convenient and efficient public service, and when they see the websites as 28
providing a platform for wider public participation. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed: H10: The perceived service value of government websites has a positive impact on citizens’ continuous-use intention. Taking all the above analyses into consideration, this research proposes a conceptual framework that includes service quality, service value, and satisfaction,
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rooted in the means-ends chain theory and IS continuance theory (Parasuraman and
Grewal, 2000; Santosa and Guinard, 2011) (see Figure 3), which describes the antecedents and consequences of e-government website service quality and examines
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the influencing mechanism of PSV on the relationship between service quality and
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continuous-use intention and also explores the joint effects of service quality, service value, and satisfaction on continuous-use intention.
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In Figure 3, the arrows indicate causal relationships among e-government service
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quality, perceived value, and continuous-use intention as well as the interrelationships between service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction. This model keeps the core
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variable of the service-value-loyalty chain model and IS continuance theory and has the following key characteristics.
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First, the model has seven endogenous variables—overall perceived service quality,
efficiency value, democracy value, inclusiveness value, PSV, satisfaction, and continuous-use intention—and one exogenous variable—service quality. Second, service quality is a formative construct determined by eight attributes: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capability, interactivity, 29
and responsiveness. Third, with regard to post-adoption, the critical concerns of this model are to identify the relationships between overall service quality and each perceived value dimension and to highlight the mediating mechanism of perceived value on the relationship between service quality and users’ intention to reuse.
Methodology
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Insert Figure 3 here.
Next, we explain briefly the setting for our research, describing the state of China’s e-
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government initiatives, and then, we describe our questionnaire, where it was
developed our measurement scales.
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Study setting
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administered, and the demographics of the respondents. We also describe how we
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Before describing the cities from which data were drawn, a few words putting China’s e-government in context will be useful. In the past two decades, governments
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at all levels in China have invested enormous resources in the development of egovernment designed to encompass not only general goals of efficiency, effectiveness,
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economy, etc. but also political and social goals of greater transparency, improved service delivery, and easier public participation. E-government in China has developed from the introductory stage, in which the public is informed of the existence of government websites and their usefulness as an information source, to the stage of focusing on the integration and application of e-government. According to a United 30
Nations e-government survey conducted every two years, China’s EGPI ranking rose from 78th in 2012 to 70th in 2014 (United Nations, 2014), and according to the 2016 report, it is now ranked 63rd. This places it at the median for e-government development, making China one of the most remarkable developing countries in terms of e-government. According to the First National Government Website Census (FNGWC), the total
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number of government websites in China had reached 85,890 by July 7, 2015, with
82,674 local government websites and 3,216 central government websites.
Synchronously, potential users of government websites had increased to 688 million,
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Information Center, 2016a) by December 2015.
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and the Internet penetration rate had reached 50.3% (China Internet Network
Despite these advances, China’s e-government is still in its early stage and
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struggling with low levels of citizen usage. The Thirty-Eighth China Internet
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Development Statistics Report, released by the Chinese Internet Network Information Center, shows that as of December 2016, only 13% of the public used official
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government websites (China Internet Network Information Center, 2016b). This indicates that most Internet users have not benefitted from online government services
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(Rana and Dwivedi, 2015). One of the primary reasons for this unsatisfactory usage rate is that citizens’ intention to keep using government websites—their continuous-use intention—is low. It is necessary to encourage more citizens to continue using egovernment services by designing higher quality services that create more value for them. 31
Government websites evaluated in this research are municipal government portals, which we chose because government portals play an important role in the development of e-government services in China currently (Yuan et al., 2012). They are the most important platforms for promoting government information disclosure and for online transaction and interaction between the government and the people. Chinese governments at all levels have invested many resources into the construction of portal
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websites; hence, the service quality of the portal websites reflects the overall level of China’s e-government development. As part of its evaluation of public service quality
in China, from March to December 2015, the GOCSC evaluated four aspects of ten
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dimensions of the quality of government portals at the county level, including website
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usability (home availability and link availability), information updating (home page and basic information updating), interactive responsiveness (construction and use of
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surveys, government advisory columns, and interactive interview columns on websites),
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and service practicability (integrity of practical guidance, availability of attachments, and accessibility of the online system) (General Office of the State Council, 2015).
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Therefore, in this research, the portal websites of city governments are the research object, and service contents, functions, and technical performance are examined by
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conducting a public survey. In the introduction to the questionnaire, we provide a definition of “government portal” and give examples of government portal services; thus, potential respondents can judge whether they are qualified to answer the questionnaire. Development of questionnaire 32
We followed the instruction of Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), Verdegem and Verleye (2009), Wang and Liao (2008), Al-Huiran et al (2015), Tan et al. (2013) as well as Mackenzie et al. (2011) to develop new scales: (1) According to our conceptual definition of the construct, e-government service equality is a second-order construct measured by eight sub-dimensions, namely system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capacity,
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interactivity, and responsiveness, all of which are measured in a formative manner.
Service value is conceptualized as efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness, and the
three dimensions are treated as reflective construct. Additionally, continuous-use
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intention as well as satisfaction is a unidimensional construct measured in a reflective
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manner.
(2) We designed a set of items based on reviews of the literature, suggestions from
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eight experts (including four scholars specialized in e-government and four local
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officials in charge of e-government affairs), and interviews with twelve citizen users of government websites selected randomly. Then, the self-developed questionnaire was
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subjected to expert evaluation to check whether “the individual item reflects an aspect of the content domain of the construct, and whether the items as a set collectively
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represent the entire content domain of the construct” (Mackenzie, Podsakoff and Podsakoff, 2011, p.304). We invited ten experts to review and evaluate our questionnaire. Three of them come from the local e-government office and seven from university and other research institutions. We also invited five citizens to check if there was any ambiguity and difficulty in wording. These experts and citizens reviewed the 33
questionnaire back-to-back to avoid mutual interferences of opinions. After we collected comments, we synthesized the comments according to our judgments and revised the questionnaire accordingly. (3) The questionnaire was distributed to 120 respondents to examine the psychometric properties of the scale and to evaluate its reliability and validity. After the pretest, we removed the problematic indicators, and the questionnaire with 48 items
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was finally formulated.
The constructs in this study are “Service Quality” (SQ), “Overall Perceived Service
Value” (OSV, 3 items), “Value of efficiency” (VOE, 4 items), “Value of Democracy”
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(VOD, 4 items), “Value of Inclusiveness” (VOI, 4 items), Satisfaction (SAT, 3 items),
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and “Continuous-Use Intention” (CUI, 3 items). In accordance with the discussion in Section 2, the eight contributors of Service Quality are System Quality (SYQ, 4 items),
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Information Quality (IQ, 4 items), Service Capacity (SEC, 3 items), Accessibility (ACB,
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3 items), Security (SCT, 3 items), Reliability (REL, 3 items), Responsiveness (RES, 3 items), and Interactivity (INT, 3 items).
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The measurement tool used in this research is a mixed questionnaire that consists of the existing validated scales translated from English and the self-designed Chinese
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items developed by authors to meet the constraints of the Chinese management context. On the one hand, for the English original items, we had conducted the back translation, in which we first invited an independent Chinese native translator to translate the English items into Chinese and then invited an independent English native speaker to translate the Chinese items into English to make sure the meaning is the same. The self34
designed Chinese items were developed based on previous research, evaluation indexes of the FNGWC (General Office of the State Council, 2015), and interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. Because the works we referenced in the development of Chinese scales were conducted in e-commerce service context, we kept the content of dimensions and changed the original expressions to make them suitable to e-government situation. For the scales of SQ, the SYQ3, SYQ4, REL1,
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REL2, SCT1, SCT2, SCT3, IQ2, IQ3, IQ4, RPS1, INT1, and INT3 were items directly adapted from studies of Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), Verdegem and Verleye
(2009), Wang and Liao (2008), Wang et al. (2005), and Tan et al. (2013), and the
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remaining were self-designed. The scales of VOD, VOE, and VOI were self-developed
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according to the interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. OSV items were adapted from the analysis of Al-Huiran et al (2015). CUI was measured by
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3 items borrowed from Wangpipatwong et al. (2008). SAT was measured by 3 items
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modified from Li and Liu’s (2014) work. All items are measured using a 5-point Likert scale bounded by “totally agree” (5) and “totally disagree” (1), with “neutral” (3) in the
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middle.
Data collection and sample profile
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Data used in this study were collected from the government website and public
service satisfaction survey, which was administered by the research members from May to September 2017. Respondents are residents of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Changsha, and Shenyang who have experience using Chinese government websites. These five cities were selected for the following reasons. 35
First, e-government development in the direct-controlled municipality
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Shanghai and in the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong, and Liaoning (in which Chengdu, Changsha, Shenzhen, and Shenyang are located, respectively) represents the average level of integration and application of e-government in the east, west, middle, south, and north of China. In the 2016 Performance Evaluation of Chinese Government Websites, Shanghai and Guangdong tied for the second place, and Sichuan, Hunan, and
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Liaoning ranked third, eighth, and nineteenth, respectively, among China’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities (China Software Testing Center, 2014).
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Second, the direct-controlled municipality and cities we selected are the most
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developed and populous cities in their respective regions, and each of the cities (except Shanghai and Shenzhen) is the capital city of the province. These cities are also
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characterized by multicultural social structures, which ensure a diversity of samples for
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our survey.
The survey was distributed by way of random interception to 2,868 citizens in
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municipal service halls, parks, libraries, community centers, and other populated places in which potential e-government users were likely to appear. Of the 2,261 surveys
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recovered, 611 were unusable because of missing response items. That left 1,650 valid questionnaires, for an effective response rate of 57.5%. The descriptive characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 2. Of the 1,650
1The
designation “direct-controlled municipality” indicates that the city of Shanghai is administratively at the same level as a province; i.e., at the first tier of governmental administration. In addition to Shanghai, China’s other direct-controlled municipalities are Beijing, Tianjin, and Chongqing. 36
respondents, 15.9% are from Shenyang, 16.8% from Changsha, 18.3% from Chengdu, 23.2% from Shanghai, and 25.8% from Shenzhen. Slightly more respondents (53.6%) are male (46.4% are female). In terms of residence, 60.1% of respondents are native residents and 39.9% are not. A majority of respondents are in the 20–39 year age range (77.3%). Employees working in private companies represent the largest percentage of respondents (33.1%), followed by commercial and service (18.7%) and self-employed
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(17.3%). Most respondents have an undergraduate degree (67%), 12.4% have a high
school education or less, and 13.8% have a postgraduate degree. Respondents with
monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan comprise 37% of the sample, followed by
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those with income in the range of 3,000–5,000 yuan (30.6%), and then those making
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less than 3,000 yuan (18.9%). Most of the respondents have more than five years of Internet experience (82.4%); 35.8% report daily Internet use for two to four hours,
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followed by 29.2% with a daily use for five to seven hours, and 21% with a daily use
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for eight hours or more. This means that a majority of participants are experienced
Insert Table 2 here.
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Internet users. Overall, the sample shows good representativeness and high diversity.
Measurement scales The constructs in this study are “service quality” (SQ), “overall perceived service
value” (OSV, 3 items), “value of efficiency” (VOE, 4 items), “value of democracy” (VOD, 4 items), “value of inclusiveness” (VOI, 4 items), “satisfaction” (SAT, 3 items), 37
and “continuous-use intention” (CUI, 3 items). In accordance with the discussion in Section 2, the eight contributors of service quality are system quality (SYQ, 4 items), reliability (REL, 3 items), security (SCT, 3 items), accessibility (ACB, 3 items), information quality (IQ, 4 items), service capability (SEC, 3 items), interactivity (INT, 3 items), and responsiveness (RES, 3 items). The measurement tool used in this research is a mixed questionnaire that consists
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of the existing validated scales translated from English and the self-designed Chinese items developed by the authors. For the items that were originally in English, we tested
our translations with back translation—that is, we first invited an independent Chinese
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native translator to translate the English items into Chinese and then invited an
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independent English native speaker to translate the Chinese items back into English to make sure the meaning is the same. The self-designed Chinese items were developed
lP
based on previous research, evaluation indexes of the FNGWC (General Office of the
na
State Council, 2015), and interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. Because the works we referenced in the development of the Chinese items are
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from the e-commerce service context, we kept the content of dimensions and changed the original expressions to make them suitable for the e-government situation. SYQ3,
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SYQ4, REL1, REL2, SCT1, SCT2, SCT3, IQ2, IQ3, IQ4, INT1, INT3, and RPS1 are directly adapted from the studies of Wang et al. (2005), Wang and Liao (2008), Verdegem and Verleye (2009), Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), and Tan et al. (2013), and the remaining are self-designed. The scales of VOD, VOE, and VOI are self-developed based on the interviews with scholars and e-government officials in 38
China. OSV items are adapted from the analysis of Al-Hujran et al. (2015). CUI is measured by three items borrowed from Wangpipatwong et al. (2008). SAT is measured by three items modified from Li and Liu’s (2014) work. All items are measured using a five-point Likert scale bounded by “totally agree” (5) and “totally disagree” (1), with
Data Analysis
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“neutral” (3) in the middle.
We employ a three-stage approach to data analysis as follows. (1) Partial least squares (PLS) analysis with SmartPLS2.0 is used to test measurement models and
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identify the formative structure of service quality contributed by the eight attributes.
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(2) Path analysis is used to test the direction and strength of hypothesized relationships. (3) A bootstrap approach with Lisrel8.8 is used to validate the mediating
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mechanisms of the three dimensions of public value on the relationship between
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service quality and reuse intention. Test of measurement model
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Exploratory factor analysis is used to examine the dimensions of service quality. First, this study utilizes KMO and Bartlett’s tests to determine whether the collected
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data are suitable for factor analysis. The KMO value of the scale is 0.977 (> 0.5), which indicates that the data are suitable for factor analysis. The Bartlett’s test value of sphericity is 98701.66 (P < 0.000), which indicates that there are common factors existing in the correlation coefficient matrix. For the reflective measures, SPSS17.0 is used to calculate the internal consistency 39
coefficient of each measurement scale. The data are reliable if the internal consistency coefficient is greater than 0.7. When the number of items is less than six, the data are acceptable if the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) is greater than 0.6. Specifically, the internal consistency coefficients of system quality, information quality, service capacity, accessibility, security, reliability, responsiveness, interactivity, overall PSV, value of efficiency, value of democracy, value of inclusiveness, satisfaction, and
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continuous-use intention are 0.821, 0.822, 0.816, 0.843,0.811, 0.877, 0.881, 0.821,
0.788, 0.731, 0.786, 0.855,0.873, and 0.801, respectively. This shows that the measurement scales of each construct have high reliability and consistency with related
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items.
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As shown in Table 3, for the measurement model of the eight quality attributes, factor loadings of the corresponding potential variables are between 0.71 and 0.88. For
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the measurement instrument of PSV, factor loadings are between 0.71 and 0.87. Factor
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loadings of items measuring continuous-use intention (CUI) are between 0.77 and 0.81. Factor loadings of items measuring satisfaction (SAT) are between 0.81 and 0.85. The
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composite reliability (CR) of each latent variable is greater than 0.7, and the average variation extracted (AVE) is higher than 0.5. The results show that all measurement
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items are of high quality and have high reliability as well as convergent validity. Discriminant validity analysis results show that the square roots of average variation extractions of all the variables are higher than their correlation coefficients with other variables, indicating that the constructs can be easily distinguished from each other (see Table 4). 40
The formative measures should be treated differently in terms of reliability and validity tests because the variance of the latent construct under scrutiny is caused by the observable formative items. According to Tan et al. (2013) and Blut (2016), the statistics for reliability assessment of internal consistency, including Cronbach’s alpha, AVE, and CR, are not meaningful for formative measures, as they are not necessarily correlated. Multicollinearity is the major concern for formative constructs
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because the first-order constructs can jointly cause the variance of the corresponding
formative second-order constructs in a way similar to multiple regressions, leading to
unstable and inaccurate estimation of indicator weights. As shown in Table 4, none of
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the bivariate correlation coefficients is higher than 0.9, and all variance inflation
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factors are below 3.5, indicating that multicollinearity is not a problem in this
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research.
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Insert Table 3 here.
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Insert Table 4 here.
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Test of structural model
The eight indicators for service quality are supported by empirical results (see
Figure 4). Each of the eight indicators significantly explains the variance of service quality. The formative paths for the eight service quality indicators are as follows: system quality (β = 0.08*, p < 0.05), reliability (β = 0.11**, p < 0.01), security (β = 41
0.12**, p < 0.001), accessibility (β = 0.07*, p < 0.05), information quality (β = 0.22***, p < 0.001), service capability (β = 0.23***, p < 0.001), interactivity (β = 0.16***, p < 0.001), and responsiveness (β = 0.21***, p < 0.001). Service quality has a significant positive effect on all three dimensions of public value (efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness). The standardized path coefficient (t value) of service quality to efficiency is 0.48*** (18.11), to democracy is 0.11** (2.91),
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to inclusiveness is 0.34*** (15.62). Therefore, H7, H8, and H9 are supported. Moreover, all three dimensions of public value have significant positive effects on PSV. The standardized path coefficient (t value) of efficiency is 0.52*** (21.88), of democracy is
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0.13*** (5.21), and of inclusiveness is 0.38*** (17.21). The three dimensions explain
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71% of the variance in PSV. H1, H2, and H3 are supported. Moreover, service quality and PSV positively affect satisfaction with coefficients of 0.41*** (18.91) and 0.42***
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(19.12), respectively, and the two variables explain 62% of the variance of satisfaction.
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H5 and H6 are supported. Finally, PSV and satisfaction have a positive effect on CUI with the coefficients of 0.58*** (22.85) and 0.27*** (11.61), respectively, and the two
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variables explain 64% of the variance in continuous-use intention. Therefore, H4 and
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H10 are supported.
Insert Figure 4 here.
Significance test of mediating effect Bootstrapping approach in LISREL8.8 is used to test the significance of the 42
mediating effect of PSV. The bootstrapping approach is more suitable than other commonly used statistical methods such as the Sobel test in this circumstance because it is not subject to the normality assumptions of statistics and thus can provide unbiased estimates. The procedure adopted in this paper for the bootstrapping test is borrowed from Fang et al. (2013) and Hayes (2013). The criterion for judgment is that if 0 is not included in the 95% confidence interval of the average path coefficient, then the
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mediating effect is significant. As shown in Table 5, there are six average mediating
effects for which the 95% confidence intervals do not include 0. This indicates that PSV
is a significant mediating variable between e-government service quality and citizens’
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continuous-use intention.
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Insert Table 5 here.
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Discussion
To explore the interrelationship between government website service quality,
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perceived value, and the influences of both on citizens’ reuse intention, this study develops a chain model of e-government service quality, perceived value, and citizens’
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continuous-use intention that takes a means-end approach and integrates several egovernment service quality evaluation models. Using data collected from a survey of 1,650 citizen users living in one direct-controlled municipality and four highpopulation cities in China, this study verifies the formative structure of e-government service quality through PLS analysis and then tests the proposed concept model using 43
structural equation modeling. The following observations are of note. First, this research creates a formative construct of e-government service quality with eight indicators: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capacity, interactivity, and responsiveness. The first four indicators describe the efficiency of a government website as a delivery channel for public service, similar to the concept of service delivery quality suggested by Tan et al (2013). The last
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four indicators reflect the effectiveness of the service content provided by the
government website—how well it achieves promised outcomes and meets citizens’ needs. These four indicators are highly consistent with the concept of service content
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quality defined by Tan et al (2013).
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Among the eight indicators, information quality, service capacity, and responsiveness are found to be the stronger contributors to service quality, while the
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first-order dimensions that reflect the technical performance of e-government service
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contribute only a little to the service value, with coefficients hovering just approximately 0.1. Improvements in technology have addressed inaccessibility, system
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insecurity, and instability problems, such that now 90.8% of the portal systems of China’s government websites are in normal operation, according to the FNGWC. The
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result is that citizens who are familiar with e-government are inclined to take system quality and reliable operation for granted and therefore focus less on those factors when evaluating government websites’ service quality, which weakens the relationship between technical attributes and service quality. In other words, citizens’ assessments of e-government service quality depend more on the services available on government 44
portals, so attributes referring to service functions should be given more attention to achieve a high level of e-government service quality. Second, the importance of PSV in linking service quality and continuous-use intention is empirically supported in this research. Citizens’ perceptions of the value of e-government service are significantly predicted and strongly explained by the efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness promoted by e-government services, together
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accounting for 71% of the variance in PSV. Furthermore, e-government systems with high service quality are found to be more effective in inducing citizens to reuse their services mainly through improvements in efficiency and convenience, and the
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bootstrapping test results also confirm the mediating role of service value. These results
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further prove that the service quality acts as an essential premise of value, and a highvalue e-government service rests on users’ perception of value created by the services
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offered by government websites, such as information search, online transactions, and
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online communication between the government and the public (Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015). When citizens realize that government websites can
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provide useful information, make it possible to take care of transactions more efficiently, and facilitate their communication with the government, their perception of the value
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of government websites makes them desire to use those websites again in the future. This finding is consistent with the results of a previous value-based technology acceptance study that found the dominant influence on citizens’ continuous-use intention was perceived utility (a concept that is similar to perceived value in this study) (Wangpipatwong et al., 2008). 45
Finally, as hypothesized, continuous-use intention is a consequence of service quality, service value, and satisfaction. Our results reveal that PSV and satisfaction play a critical role in predicting citizens’ behavioral intention, together explaining 64% of continuous-use intention. Citizens’ decisions regarding whether to continue to use egovernment services are affected primarily by their perception of the public value generated by the e-government service. Although satisfaction is not the core variable in
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this research, the empirical results of our model indicate that service quality, service value, and satisfaction are interdependent, and that we must understand their interaction
to understand what motivates continuous use-intention in the context of e-government.
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As suggested above, these findings not only provide impressive empirical support
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for the belief-attitude-intention-behavior framework and theories based on this framework, such as the means-end chain theory, the service-value-loyalty chain model,
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and the IS continuance model, but also reconfirm the statement that service value and
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satisfaction are salient mediators between service quality and reuse intention (Grimsley
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& Meehan, 2007; Kettinger et al., 2009; Li and Liu, 2014).
Contributions, implications, limitations, and future research
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In the subsections that follow, we first detail our contributions—addition of
empirical evidence to the literature, in support of a formative model; a focus on the service element of perceived value of e-government; and creation of a comprehensive framework for understanding the interrelationships between service quality, service value, satisfaction, and reuse intention. We then describe the implications for 46
government, in partCUIlar where to focus efforts to improve e-government service quality and what factors, in addition to citizens’ continuous-use behavior, governments should also be taking into consideration. We then turn to limitations and directions for future research. Contributions This study contributes to e-government research in three ways. First, it adds
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empirical evidence, adopting a higher order and formative approach, similar to that used by scholars such as Ancarani (2005), Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2009; 2012),
Qutaishat (2012) Lindgren and Jansson (2013), and Tan et al (2013), to analyze service
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quality in the field of e-government. It not only contributes to the operationalization of
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e-government service quality, supporting Tan et al.’s (2013) comprehensive conceptualization of e-government service quality but also deepens our theoretical
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understanding of the contributors to citizens’ perception of the quality of municipal
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government websites in countries whose e-government development is not yet at the level of the most developed countries.
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Creating value for the public should be the central purpose of e-government, but little attention has been paid to the antecedents and consequences of citizens’
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perceptions of that value. Subscribing to a public-value perspective, the second contribution this study makes is to explore the dimensions influencing the perceived value of e-government in a service-dominant way. This study treats perceived value as a mediator between service quality and continuous-use intention and examines the important role that perception of service value plays in citizens’ intention to continue 47
to use e-government websites. This study fills a gap in scholarship by testing and validating the concepts of service quality and perceived value as well as their influence on intention to reuse government websites. More importantly, although most prior relevant research examined factors influencing users’ intentions toward e-government based on classical IS acceptance theories such as the IS success model and the IS continuance model, this research
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develops an extended service-value-loyalty chain model, integrating the IS continuance
model and the quality-value-loyalty chain model, which is widely used in explaining customers’ purchasing behavior in marketing but rarely applied in IS research. Hence,
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by combining theories in an interdisciplinary way, this study makes a third contribution:
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it provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the interrelationships between service quality, service value, satisfaction, and reuse intention. The results
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highlight the significant interrelation between post-adoption behavioral intention and
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other relevant constructs, especially the critical effect of perceived value on reuse intention, and they also provide impressive support for the quality-value-loyalty chain
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developed by Parasuraman and Grewal (2000), in which PSV is a powerful mediator between service quality and continuous-use intention (Omar et al., 2011; Wang, C.,
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2014; Osmani, 2015). In agreement with the assertion of Cronin et al. (2000), the study also emphasizes the essentiality of proposing a simultaneous, multivariate analytical framework to examine determinants of citizens’ intentions to continue to use intention e-government services. Doing so recognizes the fact that citizens’ decision making is a complex process resulting from service quality, service value, and satisfaction and that 48
to omit or neglect any one of those will lead to incomplete understanding and inaccurate prediction of citizens’ post-using behaviors regarding e-government systems. Implications Practically, the results of this study have at least two policy implications. First, because the study finds (a) that service quality is a powerful driver of value creation and (b) that perception of service value depends significantly on how well e-
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government systems promote efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness, one implication is that to enhance citizens’ perceptions of service value, e-government policymakers
and website designers must take comprehensive measures to improve service quality
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along the eight dimensions of system quality, reliability, security, accessibility,
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information quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness. Second, the results of this study suggest that technical features such as system quality, accessibility,
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and reliability only have very weak effects on citizens’ PSV, whereas service
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characteristics such as information quality, service capability, and interactivity play a more important role in explaining citizens’ perceptions of value. Therefore, e-
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government value creation efforts should focus on service improvements such as providing citizens with precise and prompt information, convenient one-stop service
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delivery, and a secure online service environment, which, in turn, indirectly encourage citizens to reuse e-government services and will ultimately raise the e-government utilization rate. Third, the results suggest that e-government service providers who pursue higher citizens adoption rates should also be considering the effect of their initiatives on citizens’ perceived value and satisfaction with the services delivered. 49
Limitations and future research This study’s limitations indicate possible routes for future research. First, this study focuses on individual citizens who are the primary users of government websites, but business organizations, nonprofit organizations, and even public sector organizations are also important target groups for e-government services. Future research can be extended to these stakeholders and explore their reuse intentions, using the model we
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develop here. Second, in addition to portals, there are other e-channels that government can employ for interactions with the public, such as microblogs, official WeChat, and
mobile apps. These channels make possible the provision of diversified and
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personalized public services, which is a new trend in e-government in China. Thus,
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another possibility for the future study is an investigation of citizens’ continuous-use behavior when using these emerging modalities, with the aim of testing the explanatory
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power and applicability of the conceptual model in the context of emerging e-
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government services. The third direction for future research has to do with the development of test items. In our case, we modified existing scales and experimental
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procedures whenever possible. For example, we interviewed scholars and officials in e-government, which may reduce the validity of newly designed items. Future research
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should try to develop new items in accordance with more formal procedure proposed by existing literature.
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About the Authors
68
1.Yan Li, an assistant professor at Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China PR. Her research interest lies in E-government performance evaluation.
2.Huping Shang (Corresponding author), a professor at Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China PR. He lays his research interest in
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government performance evaluation and public service performance evaluation.
69
Intrinsic
Perceived
Perceived
attributes
quality
value
Purchase
Figure 1. A means-end model relating price, quality, and value Source: V. A. Zeithaml (1988). “Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: A means-end model and synthesis of evidence,” Journal of Marketing, 52(3), 2–22.
Perceived Usefulness IS Continuance Intention
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Satisfaction
Confirmation
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Figure 2. IS continuance model Source: Bhattacherjee, A. (2001). “Understanding information systems continuance: An expectation-confirmation model.” MIS Quarterly, 25(3), 351–370.
Means-End Chain Theory
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Quality attributes System quality
Security
Service
Accessibility
Quality
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Continuous-
Democracy value
Servic
Use intention
Inclusiveness
e value
value
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Information quality
Overall
Overal
Efficiency value
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Reliability
Value dimensions
Service capability Interactivity
Satisfaction
Responsiveness
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IS Continuance Theory
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Figure 3. A chain model of e-government service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention
70
SYQ 0.08*
REL
0.11**
SCT
0.12***
EFV
0.48***
ACS
0.22***
IQ
SEC
0.52***
0.23***
R2=0.64
R2=0.71
0.07*
S Q
0.11**
0.58***
0.13***
DEV 0.34***
PSV
CUI
0.38***
INV 0.42***
0.16***
0.27***
0.41***
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INT
0.21***
SAT
RPS
R2=0.62
Figure 4. Results of structural model analysis
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Significance: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
71
Table 1. Recent e-government quality evaluation dimensions Authors
Measurement Dimension
Object
Connectivity, actuality, navigability, accessibility, interactivity, and
Swiss French official
(2004)
transparency
website
Barnes and Vidgen (2003)
Usability (site design), information quality (accuracy, format, and
UK Inland Revenue
relevance), and service quality (trust and empathy)
website
Sukasame (2004)
Reliability, content, ease of use, linkage, and self-service
Thai public websites
Jansen and Ølnes (2004)
Accessibility, user orientation, and useful services
Norwegian
Glassey
and
Glassey
public
websites Horan et al. (2006)
Effectiveness, productivity, safety, and user satisfaction
US Advanced Travel Information Systems
Electronic services (general services, education, economic affairs,
12 cities in 35 EU
social services, and cultural/leisure/sports), electronic participation
countries
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Torres et al. (2006)
(political dimension, fiscal responsibility, and civic dialogue), and network maturity
Omar et al. (2011)
Online service, navigation, user assistance, information structure,
American
legal protection, and accessibility adjustment
government websites
Information
quality
personalization,
(completeness,
and
relevance,
ease
of
security),
understanding,
system
None
quality
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Baker (2009)
(adaptability, availability, reliability, response time, and usability), and service quality (assurance, empathy, and responsiveness)
and
Jordanian government
responsiveness
websites
Ease of use, reliability, trust, citizen support, content and appearance
Greek
Mentzas (2009, 2012)
of information, and functionality of the interactive environment
websites
Tan et al. (2013)
Training,
United
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Papadomichelaki
Design, interactivity, security, informativeness, empathy, trust, and
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Qutaishat (2012)
monitoring,
upgrading,
scheduling,
delegating,
negotiating, and evaluating; needing function and customizing
government
States
government websites.
function; and sourcing, trying, ordering, paying, tracking, accepting,
Hu et al. (2014)
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and authorizing function
Content service capability (information service, transaction service,
102 cities in mainland
and participation service), service delivery capability, and on-
China
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demand capability
City
Frequency
Table 2. Sample profile Percentag
Frequency
Percentage （%）
e （%）
Shenyang
262
15.9
Changsha
278
16.8
Chengdu
302
18.3
Shanghai
384
23.2
Shenzhen
424
25.8
Occupation
72
Retired
50
3
Student
98
6
Other
32
2
Gender
Age
Occupation
Native
992
60.1
Middle school
110
6.7
Non-Native
658
39.9
High school
205
12.4
Male
885
53.6
Bachelor
1106
67
Female
855
46.4
Postgraduate
229
13.8
=<20
35
2.1
Income
=<1000
222
13.5
20–29
706
42.8
(yuan/month)
1,001–3,000
312
18.9
30–39
602
36.4
3,001–5,000
506
30.6
40–49
201
12.2
>=5,001
610
37
50–59
71
4.3
Daily
=<2 hours
231
14
>=60
35
2.2
Internet
2–4 hours
590
35.8
Government
118
7.1
Usage
5–7 hours
481
29.2
Shiye Unit
182
11
>=8 hours
348
21
Private
546
33.1
=<1 year
30
1.8
Education
Internet
Company
Experience
Commercial and
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Household
309
18.7
1–5 years
261
15.8
Self-Employed
285
17.3
6–10 years
612
37.1
Unemployed
30
1.8
>=10 years
747
45.3
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Service
Table 3. Results of reliability and validity tests Factor
CR
AVE
loading
SYQ1. I can successfully log on to the government website every time.
0.88
SYQ2. I can successfully visit the related links provided at the home page.
0.82
SYQ3. Using the website lets me surfs effortlessly through relevant webpages while
lP
SYQ
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Description of items
0.81
REL1. The website system operated stably for the e-government transactions.
0.82
REL2. Faults I encountered when using websites can be corrected as soon as possible to
0.87
0.91
0.71
0.89
0.72
0.78
0.55
0.85
0.66
performing my e-government transactions.
SYQ4. The function modules on government websites are arranged in a user-friendly
REL
na
way.
0.85
ensure the reliable operation of the system.
SCT
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REL3. All the functions and services on the website operate normally. SCT1. I know that my personal information submitted to the government websites is
0.86 0.74
used in a secure manner.
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SCT2. The website has adequate security measures to protect my personal information
0.75
from being stolen or leaked. SCT3. I trust that hackers will not be able to access the information I provide when
0.74
performing my e-government transactions.
ACB
ACB1. I’m informed and introduced to how to use the website by the government
0.82
through various initiatives, which makes me have equal access to online public service. ACB2. I do not encounter any problem in accessing the website using my computer to
0.79
perform my e-government transactions. ACB3. I do not need to perform complicated technical configurations in order to access services on government websites. 73
0.83
SEC
SEC1. I am able to complete different e-government transactions using the same website.
0.81
SEC2. All functions needed to complete my required service are available from the
0.82
0.87
0.68
0.83
0.55
0.87
0.72
websites. SEC3. The website lets me complete transaction provided by different governmental
0.86
organizations. IQ
RPS
IQ1. Information provided at the website is up-to-date.
0.77
IQ2. I can quickly find the required information on the website.
0.75
IQ3. The information provided by the website is well organized.
0.71
IQ4. The website provides accurate information about relevant services.
0.73
RPS1. The website can inform me of the progress of my transaction by e-mail or
0.88
message. 0.83
RPS3. The website system responded in a timely fashion during my e-government
0.84
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RRS2. The website takes prompt action when I encounter problems performing my task.
transaction. INT
INT1. Using the websites makes me communicate with government more easily.
0.79
INT2. Public opinion surveys and interactive interviews are often held on government
0.82
websites.
0.74
VE1. Using government website is an efficient way to access public service.
0.81
VE2. I value the convenience brought by government website in service delivery.
0.75
VE3. Using e-government system to access public service increases the government
0.83
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VOE
INT3. Using the websites makes me feel more involved in public decisions.
VOD
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efficiency.
VD1.Using government website to access service makes me know more about what the government is doing.
0.85
0.71
VD3. Using government website to access service increases the government
0.82
transparency.
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VD2. Using government website to access service brings me closer to public affairs.
na
VD4. Using government website to access service increases the government
0.83
0.61
0.84
0.64
0.86
0.61
0.87
0.68
0.88
0.71
0.83
0.62
0.75
accountability. VOI
VI1. Using government website makes the public service more available to more people.
0.87
VI2. Using government website is valuable to providing equal public service to all
0.82
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citizens.
VI3. Using government website makes the disadvantaged groups benefit more from
0.79
public service.
OSV1. Overall, I believe that using government website to access public service
Jo
OSV
0.82
provides public value. OSV2. The value I receive from government website is worth of the time, effort and
0.85
money I have invested. OSV3. The value derives from services on government website is worth of the time,
0.85
effort and money the government have invested.
CUI
CUI1. I intend to increase the use of government websites in the future.
0.77
CUI2. I will recommend others to use government websites.
0.78
CUI3. In the future, I will consider e-Government websites to be my first choice to do
0.81
business with the government. 74
SAT
SAT1. I am satisfied with the service I received from the government websites.
0.83
SAT2. I am very pleased with my past experience of using government website service.
0.85
SAT3. The government website provides satisfied public services that meet my needs.
0.81
0.87
Table 4. Interconstruct correlation matrix REL
SCT
ACB
SEC
IQ
RPS
INT
VOE
0.84
REL
0.45
0.85
SCT
0.41
0.35
0.74
ACB
0.32
0.33
0.46
0.81
SEC
0.36
0.47
0.32
0.31
0.82
IQ
0.39
0.52
0.43
0.27
0.43
0.74
RPS
0.41
0.38
0.44
0.25
0.37
0.42
0.85
INT
0.52
0.19
0.11
0.39
0.28
0.35
0.42
0.78
VOE
0.22
0.34
0.12
0.51
0.33
0.33
0.41
0.37
0.80
VOD
0.21
0.51
0.34
0.11
0.30
0.22
0.32
0.34
0.41
VOI
0.34
0.42
0.27
0.13
0.42
0.46
0.21
0.23
0.32
OSV
0.41
0.27
0.29
0.32
0.15
0.31
0.16
0.22
0.37
SAT
0.28
0.25
0.19
0.47
0.25
0.28
0.11
0.17
0.27
CUI
0.45
0.26
0.28
0.22
0.13
0.16
0.24
0.25
0.22
VOI
OSV
SAT
CUI
0.78 0.41
0.82
0.34
0.17
0.84
0.22
0.19
0.73
0.83
0.23
0.29
0.75
0.55
-p
SYQ
VOD
ro of
SYQ
0.79
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Notes: The diagonal is the square root of the average variation extraction (AVE), and the left and the bottom values are the variable correlation coefficients. Table 5. Bootstrapping analysis of the mediation effect of perceived service value Mediating variable
Dependent variable
Average effect
SQ SQ SQ EFV DEV INV
EFV DEV INV PSV PSV PSV
PSV PSV PSV CUI CUI CUI
0.25 0.014 0.013 0.31 0.075 0.22
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Independent variable
75
95% confidence interval
Lower limit 0.076 0.06 0.031 0.118 0.053 0.155
Upper limit 0.161 0.09 0.079 0.188 0.101 0.202
0.69
PII:
S0378-7206(17)30691-2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103197
Article Number:
103197
Reference:
INFMAN 103197
To appear in:
INFMAN
Received Date:
5 August 2017
Revised Date:
28 July 2019
Accepted Date:
12 August 2019
Please cite this article as: Li Y, Shang H, Service Quality, Perceived Value, and Citizens’ Continuous-Use Intention Regarding E-government: Empirical Evidence from China, Information and amp; Management (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103197
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2019 Published by Elsevier.
Service Quality, Perceived Value, and Citizens’ Continuous-Use Intention Regarding E-government: Empirical Evidence from China
Yan Li Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science,
Email: [email protected]
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Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China PR
Huping Shang (Corresponding author)
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Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China PR
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Email: [email protected]
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This study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71704018), Key Project of Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education,
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China (Grant No. 18JZD047), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
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Universities of China (Grant No. DUT18RC(4)022; 63192402).
1
Abstract Citizens’ low continuous-use intention has become a great challenge for the development of e-government in China. This study has developed a chain model of egovernment service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention to explain the relationship between government website service quality and perceived value, as well as how that relationship influences citizens’ reuse intention. Using data
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collected from a survey of 1,650 citizen users living in one direct-controlled municipality and four high-population cities in China, this study verifies the
components of e-government service quality through partial least squares (PLS)
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analysis and then tests the proposed concept model using structural equation modeling.
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The results reveal that the concept of e-government service quality has eight contributing dimensions: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information
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quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness. Perceived service value is
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a powerful mediator between service quality and citizens’ continuous-use intention. The
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intention to use is a consequence of service quality, service value, and satisfaction.
Keywords：e-government, government websites, citizens’ continuous-use intention,
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service quality, perceived value
2
Introduction Continuous-use intention, one of the most primary postadoption behaviors, is a fundamental and critical indicator of users’ loyalty. It is seen as the key to the success of e-government programs because investments in e-government are cost effective and will only achieve maximal benefit if citizens engage in continuous use (Bhattacherjee, 2001; Hu et al., 2009; Limayem et al., 2003).
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Of all the factors that influence users’ loyalty, service quality and perceived value
are the ones that have been proved most consistently to enhance users’ continuous-use intention (Hardeep and Kumari, 2011; Le and Thuy, 2012; Rasheed and Abadi, 2014).
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Citizens will be discouraged from reusing an e-government system if they have
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experienced poor service quality and decide that the service is worthless or valueless, and their reactions directly determine the legitimacy of investments in e-government
lP
infrastructure and programs (Al-Hujran et al., 2015). Therefore, developers are striving
na
to overcome the problems that prevent citizens from reusing e-government services. This situation highlights the importance of understanding the contributors to quality
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and the antecedents of service value relevant to e-government service, investigating the mechanism whereby service quality affects the service value of e-government, and
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examining the mediating role perceived service value (PSV) plays in the relation between service quality and citizens’ intention to reuse online public services. Prior research has modeled service value as a mediator between service quality and behavioral intention to reuse a system or a service (Kettinger et al., 2009). Although many researchers use classic technology acceptance models (e.g., information systems 3
[IS] continuance model, expectation-confirmation theory, and IS success model) when examining the factors that influence citizens’ continuous use of government websites (Jen and Hung, 2010; Hung et al. 2013), few take a comprehensive view of service quality and service value or look at the empirical relationships among the service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention (Alford and O’Flynn, 2008). This paper discusses this research shortcoming by addressing the following research
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questions (RQs):
RQ1: What attributes contribute to citizens’ overall perceptions of e-government service quality?
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RQ2: How does service value mediate the relationship between service quality and
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citizens’ continuous-use intention?
RQ3: What factors motivate citizens to continue to use e-government services?
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To answer these questions, this research develops a continuous-use intention model
na
of e-government that integrates the quality-value-loyalty chain model and the IS continuance model. In our new model, service quality is measured using a formative
ur
approach. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: the next section develops the research model and major hypotheses, reviewing relevant literature in the process.
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Section 3 covers methodology, and Section 4 provides data analysis. Section 5 discusses findings, and Section 6 highlights the paper’s contributions, implications, and limitations, as well as directions for future research.
Research model and hypothesis development 4
In the subsections below, we explain how we identified the eight attributes that contribute to service quality in our model, describe the characteristics of each attribute, and develop our hypotheses. Attributes contributing to e-government service quality From a user’s perspective, e-government service quality can be defined by how well online public services provided by government websites meet the user’s
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requirements (Tan and Benhasat, 2013) and by the extent to which government websites
facilitate efficient and effective information search and online transactions as well as communication between government and citizens (Blut, 2016). E-government service
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quality reflects the sum of features and attributes associated with its performance of a
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particular public service (Baker, 2009; Lindgren and Jansson, 2013). In studying e-government service quality, scholars and practitioners try to evaluate
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how well government websites meet citizens’ needs, and they measure the quality of
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the services provided. Unfortunately, despite extensive studies on e-government service quality, there is no consensus on evaluation criteria. Table 1 presents various
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measurement dimensions and objects of evaluation from the literature.
Insert Table 1 here.
Earlier studies have misinterpreted two aspects in their conceptualization and measurement of e-government service value, namely, technical performance quality and service function quality. Ancarani (2005) and Tan and Benhasat (2009) emphasize 5
a comprehensive understanding and make a necessary distinction between these two sorts of quality attributes. With the aim of developing citizen-centric, quality-driven principles in the design of e-government services from the demand-side, Tan et al. (2013) extend Ancarani’s (2005) analysis of e-public service and conceptualize e-government service quality as a synthesis of service content elements and service delivery elements. Specifically,
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service content quality refers to the service functions available in government websites, and service delivery quality reflects the technology supporting the service function (Lindgren and Jansson, 2013).
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Using the customer service life cycle as a guide, Tan et al. (2013) identify 16
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service content quality attributes expressed in the following three dimensions: (1) Ownership, which refers to the service functions used to promote citizens’ participation
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in public service development and public discussion. It consists of seven attributes
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(training, monitoring, upgrading, scheduling, delegating, negotiating, and evaluating). (2) Requirement, which refers to service content that enables citizens to determine and
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obtain the services they need. It can be broken down into two attributes, namely, the needing function and the customizing function. (3) Acquisition, which consists of
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service content that can help citizens to carry out desired transactions, including sourcing, trying, ordering, paying, tracking, accepting, and authorizing. Further, by reviewing 186 related articles published in major management and information science conference proceedings and journals, Tan et al. (2013) select six attributes to measure service delivery quality, namely, accessibility, navigability, 6
interactivity, interoperability, adaptability, and security. In total, their investigation of e-government service quality contains 22 quality attributes—the most comprehensive measurement of service quality in existing literature. This research seeks to build on and clarify Tan et al.’s (2013) operationalization of e-government service equality by integrating the service content attributes and the service delivery attributes, although we use different descriptive labels. We regard e-
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government as a method, supported by information technology, providing online
services to meet citizens’ requirements (Salunke et al., 2011; Wang, C., 2014; Al-Hujran et al., 2015) and postulate that a high-quality e-government service must be
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“functionally advanced enough and technically easy [for citizens] to operate”
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(Grönroos et al., 2000, p.244).
We henceforth refer to two classifications of service quality, that is, technical
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performance quality, which refers to the efficiency of government websites as a delivery
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channel for public services, and service function quality, which describes how well the content provided by government websites achieves promised outcomes and satisfies
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citizens’ requirements.
To identify attributes of service quality that are supportive of a formative construct,
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we adjusted Tan et al.’s (2013) 22-attribute scale to our research context. 1 Three independent coders, one each from mainland China, Vietnam, and Malaysia, were asked to visit municipal government portals in these countries. The portals represent the
1
This adjustment procedure is advocated by Tan et al. (2013). In their work, they adapted the customer service life cycle model to the domain of e-government by examining government websites in the United States, Canada, and Singapore. 7
average level of global e-government development according to the E-Government Development Index (EGPI) published by the United Nations from 2012 to 2016 (United Nations, 2012, 2014, 2016). A detailed introduction to Tan et al.’s (2013) work was given to each coder to ensure that they understood the 22 attributes properly. Each coder was then instructed to check whether the service functions from Tan et al.’s (2013) model were applicable
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to genuine functions that exist on the e-government portal they were examining. They were also told to note service functions that could not be exactly classified in
accordance with Tan et al.’s (2013) framework. Depending on analysis of their feedback,
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8 of 22 quality attributes were selected. The others were deleted because of absence of
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corresponding function in practice. Additionally, because of requirements of the State Council for the development of municipal government portals in China, we adapted the
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measurement scale to match the evaluation index proposed by the General Office of the
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State Council (GOCSC). The GOCSC’s (2015) scale includes four attributes, namely, website usability (home page availability and link availability), information updating
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(home page and basic information updating), interactive responsiveness (government advisory columns and interactive interview columns on websites), and service
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practicability (integrity of practical guidance, availability of attachments, and accessibility of the online system). In the end, our eight attributes, which cover both the technical performance and the service function of e-government, are system quality, reliability, security, accessibility (Horan et al., 2006; Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012; Qutaishat, 2012), 8
information quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness (Baker, 2009; Hu et al., 2014; Omar et al., 2011; Qutaishat, 2012). Technical performance quality The first four attributes (system quality, reliability, security, and accessibility) are related to technical dimensions supporting service delivery in government websites. System quality
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System quality refers to a user-friendly arrangement of the physical attributes of
government websites, such as usability, website design, navigability, and operation modules (Glassey and Glassey, 2004; Omar et al., 2011). Unlike face-to-face
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interactions, citizens’ web interactions with the government take place in the presence
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of the service providers and actual service facilities that create the web attributes and design features that determine citizens’ quality evaluations of the e-government
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services (Tan et al., 2013). Blut (2016) claims that system quality is the first determinant
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of e-government service quality and of major significance during the early stage of online service delivery, and that citizens’ perceptions of e-government service quality
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always begin with a visual assessment of the quality of the government website system. Various studies have provided empirical evidence for the pivotal role system quality
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plays in the overall service quality of a government website (Omar et al., 2011; Lindgren and Jansson, 2013). Reliability Reliability stands for the extent to which all the service functions operate normally and consistently, with problems that arise being solved in a timely manner 9
(Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009). It reflects citizens’ assessments of government website performance in providing correct and on-time delivery of the services they need (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2012; Omar et al., 2011). Parasuraman et al. (2005) consider reliability an essential contributor to online service quality because correct technical functioning of the site directly determines the success of service provision, and any disruptions will lower service efficiency and greatly cause inconvenience to
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users. Within the domain of e-government, especially for transactional services on government websites, the importance of reliability in explaining citizens’ perceptions
of service quality has been validated by empirical evidence in existing literature
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(Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012; Osman et al., 2014).
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Security
Security can be defined as the extent to which a government website safeguards
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itself from intrusion and attack by unauthorized individuals (Tan et al., 2013). As
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expected, as far as online public services are concerned, security is of the first importance to citizens, especially when dealing with public services involving personal
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privacy and financial transactions (Horan et al., 2006; Qutaishat, 2012; Blut, 2016). Security breaches on government websites, whether information leaks, financial losses,
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or malicious attacks, not only discourage the public from using online public services but also increase citizens’ dissatisfaction with the service quality of e-government systems (Stibbe, 2005; Tassabehj et al., 2007). Consistent with this argument, previous studies also observe that citizens’ perception of the security of government websites is an important antecedent variable for the acceptance of e-government, as well as an 10
important predictor of e-government service quality (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009; Shareef et al., 2011; Hu et al., 2014). Accessibility Accessibility can be described as the degree to which service functions on government websites are available to citizens with diverse physical limitations and different IT capacities (Jansen and Ølnes, 2004; Barnes and Vidgen, 2006). It is not to
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be confused with system quality, which covers physical attributes relating to how an e-
government system operates and how easily citizens can use it. One of the important objectives of e-government is to provide more inclusive public services for the entire
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population (Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009). Hence, how well government
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websites ensure no segments of the public are excluded from the advantages of public e-services should be regarded as a necessary element in our understanding of service
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quality (Brebner and Parkinson, 2006).
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Service function quality
There are also four attributes (information quality, service capability, interactivity,
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and responsiveness) that relate to the business of providing what citizens require from online public service.
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Information quality
Information quality describes a government website’s ability to provide timely,
accurate, comprehensive, concise, and relevant information in line with citizens’ needs (Barnes and Vidgen, 2003; Papadomichelaki and Mentzas, 2009, 2012). According to the service development stages of e-government discussed in different studies (Layne 11
and Lee, 2001; European Union, 2007), although e-government services have gradually developed from an original static stage characterized by unilateral information promulgation to an interactive phase in which they handle official business between the government and the public, information quality is still a vital component of high-quality online public service and a good user experience (Carter and Bélanger, 2005). Correctness and timeliness of information of government websites are crucial: a prior
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study has found that many government websites have failed to keep information
updated in a timely manner, even in countries with high e-government development levels (Qutaishat, 2012). As most citizens are unfamiliar with administrative tasks,
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providing them with useful information and explaining the procedures required to carry
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out transactions are of utmost importance (Grimsley and Meehan, 2007). Service capability
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Service capability describes the extent to which a government website provides
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content that satisfies citizens’ needs by assisting them in achieving desired goals (Tan et al., 2013; Hu et al., 2014). Service capability is critical in earning users’ positive
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assessment of service quality. High-quality online public services should enable citizens to enjoy the benefits of one-stop service by integrating, reorganizing, and optimizing e-
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government processes and integrating the functions of different departments on the basis of work flow. Furthermore, to ensure the accountability and transparency, the process of service completion should be trackable, and citizens should be informed of service status by official e-mail and texts sent from government websites staff (Omar et al., 2011). 12
Interactivity Interactivity is used to evaluate how well government websites involve citizens in public affairs and promote the public interest by providing various means of and opportunities for communications between the government and the citizens (Glassey and Glassey, 2004; Omar et al., 2011). For governments around the world, empowering citizens and fostering democracy are two major reasons for developing e-government
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(Glassey and Glassey, 2004), which can be an effective supplement to traditional
democracy. E-participation has great potential to enable citizens to influence public policies and services that affect their lives. Therefore, how well service providers
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involve the public and how well citizens can participate in public affairs through
Responsiveness
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government services (Qutaishat, 2012).
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government websites will definitely be a factor in their perception of the quality of e-
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Lastly, responsiveness covers how quickly a government website responds to citizens’ suggestions, opinions, and demands (Grimsley and Meehan, 2007; Baker,
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2009). According to the New Public Management theory, governments should try to exploit advanced technologies to improve their responsiveness to citizens’ interests and
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demands to provide citizen-oriented and result-oriented public service (Hood, 1995). Citizens always expect quicker and more effective responses from government institutions when they communicate their thoughts and needs through government websites than they do when they use older modes of communication. Listening to the voice of the citizenry is an inherent requirement of a responsible government (Qutaishat, 13
2012; Wang, C., 2014). Consequently, the degree to which government websites make it easier for citizens to express their civic needs and desires and to get a response will have a major influence on citizens’ assessment of those websites’ service quality. Although we strongly agree with the formulation of e-government service quality put forward by Lindgren and Jansson (2013) and Tan and his colleagues (2013) and, like them, conceptualize it using a formative approach, our research has several points
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of difference in the selection and development of first-order quality dimensions and in the development of higher order measurement of e-government service quality, as explained below.
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First, it should be noted that Tan et al.’s (2013) identification and selection of
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specific quality attributes are based on content analysis of advanced government websites in Canada, Singapore, and the United Sates—nations that are leaders in the
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development of global e-government (United Nations, 2016). The websites reviewed
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in Tan et al.’s (2013) work were designed to offer advanced service functions that may not be available in countries whose government websites are still in their early stage.
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We therefore did not include high-level functional attributes in our content analysis of the service function of government websites, and we modified the first-order
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dimensions proposed by Tan et al. (2013) to make them more applicable to our research object.
A second reason for our adjustment of the original first-order dimensions relates to the nature of the government websites we investigate. The government websites we examine are municipal government portals, whereas Tan et al. (2013) were examining 14
online public transaction systems. In China, a local government portal is expected to provide information search, online transaction capability, and a means of communication to encourage citizen participation. In other words, online transactions are only one of the core service functions performed by the local government portal. Clearly, different quality dimensions are needed to measure the qualities of government websites that are providing different services, and some of the overly detailed quality
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attributes relating to online transaction services in Tan et al.’s (2013) operationalization are obviously not applicable to this study.
Third, as mentioned above, the goal of Tan et al.’s (2013) research is to develop
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quality-driven design principles for e-government services; thus, they pay more
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attention to building a hierarchical model that links citizens’ perception of government website service quality to two complementary dimensions: service content and service
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delivery. The purpose of our research, by contrast, is to identify core attributes that
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influence citizens’ perception of e-government service quality and then to explore the mediating mechanism service value plays in the relationship between service quality
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and citizens’ continuous-use intention. Therefore, we will not focus on a holistic examination of service quality. In other words, our conception of service quality will
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not be as comprehensive as that of Tan et al. (2013) or other scholars, but it is enough to answer our RQs and to capture the essential features of the service and technical performance of government portals whose functions are still in the transition stage from the two-way communication to online transaction. Perceived service value of e-government to the public 15
Perceived value is the customer’s overall judgment of the utility of services or products based on perceptions of benefits gained in the trade-off between costs and benefits (Zeithaml, 1988). Private organizations create economic value by offering consumer products and services, while public organizations create public value by offering civil services, laws, policies, and regulations in a more sophisticated way (O’Flynn, 2007). Although customers evaluate private goods and services based on the
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trade-off between benefits and costs (Wang et al., 2005; Le and Thuy, 2012), citizens assess public services much more in terms of the services’ utility as well as by how well those services perform (Alford and O’Flynn, 2008; Cordella and Bonina, 2012).
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Citizens also take into consideration the policy objectives of the services and the
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legitimacy of the political performance represented in the service.
Furthermore, while profitability of e-services is a concern in business, most e-
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government services are nonprofit, and in many cases, users have no alternative to the
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service provided by the government—two salient differences that make it diffCUIlt to measure the value of e-government services in the same way one would measure the
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value of private e-services. For these reasons, the public’s evaluation of e-government service is based on judgment of service performance and whether the service meets
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their expectations rather than an assessment of performance-to-price ratio. More importantly, the value citizens expect from e-government services is vital.
According to Moore (1995), satisfying citizens’ needs and creating value for the public should be the core promise of government when it comes to public service provision. By that standard, the legitimacy of e-government lies mainly in its ability to create value 16
for citizens by delivering public services (Wang, F., 2014). In practice, government websites are a good way to create value for the public: they allow the government to share information, offer services conveniently and efficiently, and provide a wider platform for public participation (Al-Hujran et al., 2015; Karunasena and Deng, 2012). As highlighted by the United Nations (2003), “People express preferences, the government uses information and communications technology (ICT) to enhance its own
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capacity to deliver what people want, and eventually public value is created” (p. 5).
Therefore, citizens’ perception of value in the e-government context is highly dependent on the public value generated by the e-government service.
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In accordance with the above analysis, we define users’ PSV in this research as the
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value citizens place on e-government services’ improvement of government transparency, efficiency, and accountability, and on e-government services’ promotion
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of democratic participation and social equality. Citizens’ value perceptions reflect a
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trade-off between the public utilities generated by e-government services and the cost of acquiring the services (including personal sacrifice and public spending). In other
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words, service value can be identified as citizens’ assessment of the overall utility (both public benefits and personal gains) of e-government service.
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It is worth noting that the definition of service value proposed here is similar to the
concept of perceived usefulness in the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989) and performance expectations in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Although perceived usefulness and performance expectancy indicate the degree to which an individual believes that using an information system 17
will improve his or her job performance (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh et al., 2003), both of them emphasize the benefits (saving time, money, and effort; facilitating communication with the government) of the system for individual users, whereas our research lays stress not only on the personal utility gained from using e-government services but also on the public benefits generated by e-government system, such as a more transparent, accountable, and efficient government (Chatfield and Hujran, 2007;
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Yu, 2008), and a more just, democratic, and inclusive society (West, 2004; Harrison et al., 2012).
In much of the prior research exploring the conceptualization and measurement of
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PSV or the public value of e-government, service quality is seen as a component
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dimension of service value (Kearns, 2004; Golubeva, 2007; Heeks, 2008; Mills et al., 2010; Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015; Osmani, 2015; Ha, 2016). It
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is obvious that users’ perception of value created by e-government websites depends on
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their perceptions of the websites’ services, including information search, online transactions, and online communication between the government and the public; thus,
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we agree that service quality is as an essential component of value (Osmani and Mohamad, 2015; Ishmatova and Obi, 2009). However, against the argument that service
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quality is a component of service value (Ruiz et al., 2008), we regard the quality of service and the value of service as two interrelated but completely different concepts and measure them in different ways. As mentioned earlier, unlike the case with services in business world, there are often no alternatives to services provided by government websites, and service quality simply serves as the basis for service value, that is, the 18
perception of service value or public value results from a judgment regarding service quality (Wang, C., 2014; Grimsley and Meehan, 2007). In Moore’s (1995) review, public value is understood as the value that citizens and their representatives pursue in terms of strategic outcomes and experience of public services. In the context of e-government, service value should not be measured in terms of individual benefits from e-commerce services but instead in terms of citizens’
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aspirations in the political arena. Additionally, public service value is the outcome of governmentally produced benefits, so part of the public value stems from the direct utility of these benefits and another part from the fairness of the government’s
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production, service, and distribution and from the institutional capacity to meet citizens’
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requirements. This also means that the legitimacy of e-government largely rests on its ability to create values for citizens by producing outcomes, services, and trust
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(Grimsley and Meehan, 2007).
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As service value is of such importance, it is necessary to investigate how value is created in the process of e-government service delivery. Identifying value-generating
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mechanisms is the first step (Harrison et al., 2012). There are six types of value generators in e-government projects: namely financial, political, strategic, social,
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ideological, and stewardship impacts (Chang, E. et al., 2005; Harrison et al., 2012). The first four generators are related to citizens’ substantive individual interests and reflect their utilitarian, rational, and economic valuations, and the remaining two are related to intrinsic values or social and democratic outcomes and reflect citizens’ emotional and social valuation (Boksberger and Melsen, 2011). 19
This understanding of public value creation mechanisms in e-government projects is of great significance to this research, but it is not fully applicable for analyzing the public value of e-government service in China. E-government websites are a new tool for public service in China, and at present, their strategic, ideological, and stewardship impacts can barely be perceived by citizens. This makes it difficult for us to directly measure them. To address this problem, following Harrison et al.’s (2012) arguments,
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and consistent with Al-Hujran et al. (2015), Wang, F. (2014) suggested servicedominant analysis. Our research takes that suggestion and examines service-related
issues under the framework of the public value creation mechanism suggested by
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Moore (1995), focusing on three value determinants: efficiency, democracy, and
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inclusiveness.
Efficiency refers to citizens’ perception of the e-government system’s potential to
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save money, time, and efforts in the provision of public service. Citizens expect
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efficiency with respect to public expenditure (Moore, 1995); thus, efficiency is an indispensable component of the service value citizens derive from using the e-
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government system. Hence, we propose that: H1: The service value of e-government is influenced by the efficiency of government
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websites.
Democracy refers to citizens’ perception that e-government systems empower the
public. Supported by advanced information and communication technology, the citizens can communicate with their government and participate in public affairs in a more convenient and easier way (Amoretti, 2007). E-government has the potential to 20
offer citizens unprecedented empowerment and to make participation a reality (Kardan and Sadeghiani, 2011). Further, new features and forms of cyber communication, as well as the Internet’s role in instilling in the public a desire to know about the workings of government and to enjoy freedom, have forced governments to be more responsive, sensitive, and accountable and to make their processes more transparent (Ayanso et al., 2011). These are all of great significance for democratic development. Hence, we
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proposed that
H2: The service value of e-government is influenced by the greater democracy made possible by government websites.
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Inclusiveness refers to citizens’ perception that the e-government system increases
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the accessibility of public services and makes service delivery more egalitarian (Hornung et al., 2013). ICTs have the potential to break through the limitations of time
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and space and provide undifferentiated public services and unlimited information for
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every citizen regardless of his or her income, education level, gender, language, etc. (Alfonso, 2003; United Nations, 2005). The intersection of what ICTs offer with the
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need for public inclusiveness indicates that e-government has a central role to play in promoting equity and social inclusion (United Nations, 2005). Therefore, we propose
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that
H3: The service value of e-government is influenced by the increased inclusiveness
made possible by government websites. Conceptual model Previous research on citizens’ preadoption behavior toward government websites 21
has failed to provide a heuristic framework for understanding the interrelations among service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention (Carter and Bélanger, 2005; Lemuria and France, 2005; Alawadhi and Morris, 2008；Mahadeo, 2009; Al-Shafi and Weerakkody, 2010; Alshehri et al., 2012; Hung et al., 2013; Nam, 2014; Khattab et al., 2015). To fill this gap, this study develops a model to analyze the interaction between service quality and the perceived value of government websites, as
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well as the consequences of that interaction for users’ continuous-use intention from a post-adoption perspective. The model proposed in this study combines means-end chain theory with an e-government service quality evaluation model to gain a better
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understanding of users’ intention to continue to use government websites.
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Means-end chain theory is the most representative theory exploring the relationship between customers’ values and their behaviors, that is, how attributes of products or
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services affect customers’ perceptions of benefits or costs and how these perceptions
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match up with their values and affect their consumption decisions (Grunert and Grunert, 1995; Sun et al., 2009). The attribute-consequence-value connection is generally
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considered the basic driving force underlying consumer behavior (Kaciak, 2011a, 2011b).
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Based on the attribute-consequence-value chain theory, Zeithaml (1988) develop a
means-end model that captured the relationships among perceived quality, perceived value, and behavioral decisions (see Figure 1).
Insert Figure 1 here. 22
In Zeithaml’s model, perceived quality has a positive impact on customers’ perceived value, and perceived value, in turn, affects purchase intention positively, revealing the significance of the mediating effect of perceived value on the relationship between service quality and consumer behaviors (Pura, 2005; Ruiz et al., 2008; Lai et al., 2009; Yaşlıoğlu et al., 2013). Analogously, with citizens’ use of e-government
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websites, the formation of users’ reuse intention depends largely on the perceived value
of the service, and furthermore, perceived value is regarded both as a primary antecedent for customer loyalty and as a direct consequence of perceived service quality
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(Kuo et al., 2011). With the aim of exploring the relationships among perceived quality,
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perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use behavior vis-à-vis e-government, the current study adopts the quality-value-loyalty chain model of Parasuraman and Grewal
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(2000), redefining the dimension of service quality based on integration of several e-
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government service quality evaluation models.
The IS continuance model has been widely used to explore IS continuance as it
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was first developed by Bhattacherjee in 2001. Bhattacherjee (2001) revises and expands the expectation confirmation theory, integrating perceived usefulness from the
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technology acceptance model and users’ satisfaction to predict IS continuance intention (see Figure 2).
Insert Figure 2 here.
23
As shown in the figure, satisfaction and perceived usefulness can directly affect continuous-use intention, and confirmation can exert indirect impact on continuous-use intention by influencing perceived usefulness and satisfaction. With solid theoretical foundations, the IS continuance model has been used to explain post-adoption behavioral intention in various IS situations, including e-government (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Jiang, 2011), e-commerce (Chen, 2010), and e-learning (Limayem and
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Cheung, 2008). Existing research based on this model has validated that satisfaction is the strongest predictor of reuse intention, and the relationship between satisfaction and continuous-use intention has shown the highest consistency in different research
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contexts (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Chen, 2010; Jiang, 2011; Chen et al., 2012).
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According to Li and Liu (2014) and Bhattacherjee (2001), perceived usefulness and confirmation are essentially cognitive beliefs based on comparison of pre- and post-
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utility expectations. They are more changeable and biased than satisfaction, which
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derives directly from the actual use experience, that is, “user’s perception of usefulness will be adjusted upward because of their confirmed IS usage experience” (Li and Liu,
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2014, p. 1049). Thus, the decision on whether to continue to use an IS service depends more on satisfaction than it does on perceived usefulness and confirmation, resulting in
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the uncertainty of the relationship between perceived usefulness and confirmation, as well as their effects on IS continuance. Therefore, to improve the explanatory power of the variables in our model as much as possible, this research retains only satisfaction as the core antecedent of continuous-use intention and integrates it into the means-end chain model. 24
Enlightened by the means-end chain theory and the IS continuance model, the earlier literature reveals that higher satisfaction can dramatically increase customers’ loyalty as expressed through repurchasing intention (Anderson and Srinivasan, 2003; Horan et al., 2006; Chan et al., 2010), while later studies have found that satisfaction is no longer sufficient to attract customers to reuse or repurchase the e-service (Hu at al., 2009; Alruwaie et al., 2012), and it is perceived-value attributes rather than satisfaction
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or even service quality that drives customers’ loyalty (Chai et al., 2015).
In the field of e-government research, although enormous efforts have been made
to distinguish service quality from service value and satisfaction and to explore their
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effects on users’ behavioral intentions (Byun, 2011), few studies have incorporated the
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three important constructs in a model simultaneously and investigated their comparative influences on citizens’ continuous-use intention. However, given the vital
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role that service quality, service value, and satisfaction plays in forming users’ loyalty,
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it is clear that examining only one or two variables at a time, or analyzing only their incomplete effects, is likely to result in misunderstanding citizens’ decision making in
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the context of e-government. As argued by Cronin et al. (2000), these incomplete models will result in over- or underestimating the importance of one or more of the
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three variables.
There has been a consensus that high evaluations of service quality lead to favorable
value attributions and, in turn, positive value appraisals enhance satisfaction (Bhattacherjee, 2001). Theoretical foundation for these links have been laid down by the belief-attitude-intention-behavior framework (Xu et al., 2013) and subsequent 25
theories based this framework, such as the means-end chain theory in marketing research and the IS continuance model in IS literature. According to these theories, satisfaction is regarded as an object-based attitude that is a result of cognitive-oriented beliefs, including beliefs concerning service value and service quality (Alawneh et al., 2013). More specifically, citizens’ satisfaction with e-government—that is, citizens’
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assessment of how well e-government service has met their expectations—is strongly associated with their perceived value, as well as their cognition of service quality (Sørum, 2011). Additionally, as noted above, satisfaction is the strongest predictor of
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reuse intention, and the relationship between satisfaction and continuance has
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consistently been demonstrated in different research based on the IS continuance model (Bhattacherjee et al., 2008; Jiang, 2011; Chen et al., 2012). Alruwaie et al.’s (2012)
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analysis also supports the idea that citizens’ satisfaction directly promotes their
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continuous-use intentions and that electronic public service quality increases citizens’ reuse intentions indirectly by increasing their satisfaction with e-government services.
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Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed: H4: Citizens’ satisfaction has a positive impact on citizens’ intention to continue to
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use government websites.
H5: Citizens’ perceptions of service quality have a positive impact on citizens’
satisfaction with government websites. H6: Citizens’ perceptions of overall service value have a positive impact on citizens’ satisfaction with government websites. 26
The purpose and nature of a study determine the model’s structure and the variables’ setting, and as the purpose of this research is to explore service quality and service value implications, we focus on the conceptualization and measurement of service quality and service value, as well as investigating the mechanism of their effect on citizens’ behavioral intentions. The relationship among service quality, perceived value, and customers’
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continuous-use behavior has always been a hot issue in the academic field of marketing,
but it has not been fully considered or appropriately addressed in e-government research. In the means-end chain theory, perceived value plays an important role in connecting
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service quality to continuous consumption and is both a direct antecedent of repurchase
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intention and a direct consequence of service quality (Pura, 2005; Ruiz et al., 2008; Yaşlıoğlu et al., 2013). This contribution can be applied in the e-government sphere as
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follows.
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To begin with, the value users perceive in e-government is determined largely by their usage of e-government services and their perception of the quality of those
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services (O’Flynn, 2007; Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015). This study examines how the concrete structure of service quality affects different
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dimensions of perceived value (Rasheed and Abadi, 2014; Ruiz et al., 2008). Certainly, government websites with sound systems, rich and accurate information, user-oriented service design, easy availability, powerful safeguards, reliable operation, and interactive and responsive communication platforms should definitely enhance citizens’ perception of e-government’s intrinsic values. Therefore, the following hypotheses are 27
proposed: H7: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’ perceptions of the efficiency value generated by e-government services. H8: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’ perceptions of the democracy value generated by e-government services. H9: The service quality of a government website has a positive impact on citizens’
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perceptions of the inclusiveness value generated by e-government services.
The behavioral consequences of customers’ perceptions of value have always been
a focus of marketing research. Perceived value is a key predictor of customer loyalty
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and, as noted above, can have a direct positive impact on customers’ repurchase
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intention. This has been widely supported by a large number of studies (Chang, E. et
Floh et al., 2014).
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al., 2005; Fassnacht and Köse, 2007; Yang and Jolly, 2009; Hardeep and Kumari, 2011;
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In the context of electronically provided services, analysis of technology acceptance models also shows the positive impact of users’ perceived value on their
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behavior intention. However, there is little research that explores the relationship between public value and e-government reusage (Omar et al., 2011; Osmani, 2015). In
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theory, the greater the users’ perception of the utility of e-government services, the stronger their intention to reuse the website should be. More specifically, citizens’ continuous-use intention should increase when they perceive that government websites are a valuable and useful means of obtaining information, when they perceive websites as offering convenient and efficient public service, and when they see the websites as 28
providing a platform for wider public participation. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed: H10: The perceived service value of government websites has a positive impact on citizens’ continuous-use intention. Taking all the above analyses into consideration, this research proposes a conceptual framework that includes service quality, service value, and satisfaction,
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rooted in the means-ends chain theory and IS continuance theory (Parasuraman and
Grewal, 2000; Santosa and Guinard, 2011) (see Figure 3), which describes the antecedents and consequences of e-government website service quality and examines
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the influencing mechanism of PSV on the relationship between service quality and
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continuous-use intention and also explores the joint effects of service quality, service value, and satisfaction on continuous-use intention.
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In Figure 3, the arrows indicate causal relationships among e-government service
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quality, perceived value, and continuous-use intention as well as the interrelationships between service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction. This model keeps the core
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variable of the service-value-loyalty chain model and IS continuance theory and has the following key characteristics.
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First, the model has seven endogenous variables—overall perceived service quality,
efficiency value, democracy value, inclusiveness value, PSV, satisfaction, and continuous-use intention—and one exogenous variable—service quality. Second, service quality is a formative construct determined by eight attributes: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capability, interactivity, 29
and responsiveness. Third, with regard to post-adoption, the critical concerns of this model are to identify the relationships between overall service quality and each perceived value dimension and to highlight the mediating mechanism of perceived value on the relationship between service quality and users’ intention to reuse.
Methodology
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Insert Figure 3 here.
Next, we explain briefly the setting for our research, describing the state of China’s e-
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government initiatives, and then, we describe our questionnaire, where it was
developed our measurement scales.
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Study setting
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administered, and the demographics of the respondents. We also describe how we
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Before describing the cities from which data were drawn, a few words putting China’s e-government in context will be useful. In the past two decades, governments
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at all levels in China have invested enormous resources in the development of egovernment designed to encompass not only general goals of efficiency, effectiveness,
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economy, etc. but also political and social goals of greater transparency, improved service delivery, and easier public participation. E-government in China has developed from the introductory stage, in which the public is informed of the existence of government websites and their usefulness as an information source, to the stage of focusing on the integration and application of e-government. According to a United 30
Nations e-government survey conducted every two years, China’s EGPI ranking rose from 78th in 2012 to 70th in 2014 (United Nations, 2014), and according to the 2016 report, it is now ranked 63rd. This places it at the median for e-government development, making China one of the most remarkable developing countries in terms of e-government. According to the First National Government Website Census (FNGWC), the total
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number of government websites in China had reached 85,890 by July 7, 2015, with
82,674 local government websites and 3,216 central government websites.
Synchronously, potential users of government websites had increased to 688 million,
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Information Center, 2016a) by December 2015.
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and the Internet penetration rate had reached 50.3% (China Internet Network
Despite these advances, China’s e-government is still in its early stage and
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struggling with low levels of citizen usage. The Thirty-Eighth China Internet
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Development Statistics Report, released by the Chinese Internet Network Information Center, shows that as of December 2016, only 13% of the public used official
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government websites (China Internet Network Information Center, 2016b). This indicates that most Internet users have not benefitted from online government services
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(Rana and Dwivedi, 2015). One of the primary reasons for this unsatisfactory usage rate is that citizens’ intention to keep using government websites—their continuous-use intention—is low. It is necessary to encourage more citizens to continue using egovernment services by designing higher quality services that create more value for them. 31
Government websites evaluated in this research are municipal government portals, which we chose because government portals play an important role in the development of e-government services in China currently (Yuan et al., 2012). They are the most important platforms for promoting government information disclosure and for online transaction and interaction between the government and the people. Chinese governments at all levels have invested many resources into the construction of portal
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websites; hence, the service quality of the portal websites reflects the overall level of China’s e-government development. As part of its evaluation of public service quality
in China, from March to December 2015, the GOCSC evaluated four aspects of ten
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dimensions of the quality of government portals at the county level, including website
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usability (home availability and link availability), information updating (home page and basic information updating), interactive responsiveness (construction and use of
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surveys, government advisory columns, and interactive interview columns on websites),
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and service practicability (integrity of practical guidance, availability of attachments, and accessibility of the online system) (General Office of the State Council, 2015).
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Therefore, in this research, the portal websites of city governments are the research object, and service contents, functions, and technical performance are examined by
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conducting a public survey. In the introduction to the questionnaire, we provide a definition of “government portal” and give examples of government portal services; thus, potential respondents can judge whether they are qualified to answer the questionnaire. Development of questionnaire 32
We followed the instruction of Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), Verdegem and Verleye (2009), Wang and Liao (2008), Al-Huiran et al (2015), Tan et al. (2013) as well as Mackenzie et al. (2011) to develop new scales: (1) According to our conceptual definition of the construct, e-government service equality is a second-order construct measured by eight sub-dimensions, namely system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capacity,
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interactivity, and responsiveness, all of which are measured in a formative manner.
Service value is conceptualized as efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness, and the
three dimensions are treated as reflective construct. Additionally, continuous-use
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intention as well as satisfaction is a unidimensional construct measured in a reflective
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manner.
(2) We designed a set of items based on reviews of the literature, suggestions from
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eight experts (including four scholars specialized in e-government and four local
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officials in charge of e-government affairs), and interviews with twelve citizen users of government websites selected randomly. Then, the self-developed questionnaire was
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subjected to expert evaluation to check whether “the individual item reflects an aspect of the content domain of the construct, and whether the items as a set collectively
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represent the entire content domain of the construct” (Mackenzie, Podsakoff and Podsakoff, 2011, p.304). We invited ten experts to review and evaluate our questionnaire. Three of them come from the local e-government office and seven from university and other research institutions. We also invited five citizens to check if there was any ambiguity and difficulty in wording. These experts and citizens reviewed the 33
questionnaire back-to-back to avoid mutual interferences of opinions. After we collected comments, we synthesized the comments according to our judgments and revised the questionnaire accordingly. (3) The questionnaire was distributed to 120 respondents to examine the psychometric properties of the scale and to evaluate its reliability and validity. After the pretest, we removed the problematic indicators, and the questionnaire with 48 items
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was finally formulated.
The constructs in this study are “Service Quality” (SQ), “Overall Perceived Service
Value” (OSV, 3 items), “Value of efficiency” (VOE, 4 items), “Value of Democracy”
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(VOD, 4 items), “Value of Inclusiveness” (VOI, 4 items), Satisfaction (SAT, 3 items),
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and “Continuous-Use Intention” (CUI, 3 items). In accordance with the discussion in Section 2, the eight contributors of Service Quality are System Quality (SYQ, 4 items),
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Information Quality (IQ, 4 items), Service Capacity (SEC, 3 items), Accessibility (ACB,
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3 items), Security (SCT, 3 items), Reliability (REL, 3 items), Responsiveness (RES, 3 items), and Interactivity (INT, 3 items).
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The measurement tool used in this research is a mixed questionnaire that consists of the existing validated scales translated from English and the self-designed Chinese
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items developed by authors to meet the constraints of the Chinese management context. On the one hand, for the English original items, we had conducted the back translation, in which we first invited an independent Chinese native translator to translate the English items into Chinese and then invited an independent English native speaker to translate the Chinese items into English to make sure the meaning is the same. The self34
designed Chinese items were developed based on previous research, evaluation indexes of the FNGWC (General Office of the State Council, 2015), and interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. Because the works we referenced in the development of Chinese scales were conducted in e-commerce service context, we kept the content of dimensions and changed the original expressions to make them suitable to e-government situation. For the scales of SQ, the SYQ3, SYQ4, REL1,
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REL2, SCT1, SCT2, SCT3, IQ2, IQ3, IQ4, RPS1, INT1, and INT3 were items directly adapted from studies of Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), Verdegem and Verleye
(2009), Wang and Liao (2008), Wang et al. (2005), and Tan et al. (2013), and the
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remaining were self-designed. The scales of VOD, VOE, and VOI were self-developed
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according to the interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. OSV items were adapted from the analysis of Al-Huiran et al (2015). CUI was measured by
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3 items borrowed from Wangpipatwong et al. (2008). SAT was measured by 3 items
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modified from Li and Liu’s (2014) work. All items are measured using a 5-point Likert scale bounded by “totally agree” (5) and “totally disagree” (1), with “neutral” (3) in the
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middle.
Data collection and sample profile
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Data used in this study were collected from the government website and public
service satisfaction survey, which was administered by the research members from May to September 2017. Respondents are residents of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Changsha, and Shenyang who have experience using Chinese government websites. These five cities were selected for the following reasons. 35
First, e-government development in the direct-controlled municipality
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Shanghai and in the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong, and Liaoning (in which Chengdu, Changsha, Shenzhen, and Shenyang are located, respectively) represents the average level of integration and application of e-government in the east, west, middle, south, and north of China. In the 2016 Performance Evaluation of Chinese Government Websites, Shanghai and Guangdong tied for the second place, and Sichuan, Hunan, and
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Liaoning ranked third, eighth, and nineteenth, respectively, among China’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities (China Software Testing Center, 2014).
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Second, the direct-controlled municipality and cities we selected are the most
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developed and populous cities in their respective regions, and each of the cities (except Shanghai and Shenzhen) is the capital city of the province. These cities are also
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characterized by multicultural social structures, which ensure a diversity of samples for
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our survey.
The survey was distributed by way of random interception to 2,868 citizens in
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municipal service halls, parks, libraries, community centers, and other populated places in which potential e-government users were likely to appear. Of the 2,261 surveys
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recovered, 611 were unusable because of missing response items. That left 1,650 valid questionnaires, for an effective response rate of 57.5%. The descriptive characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 2. Of the 1,650
1The
designation “direct-controlled municipality” indicates that the city of Shanghai is administratively at the same level as a province; i.e., at the first tier of governmental administration. In addition to Shanghai, China’s other direct-controlled municipalities are Beijing, Tianjin, and Chongqing. 36
respondents, 15.9% are from Shenyang, 16.8% from Changsha, 18.3% from Chengdu, 23.2% from Shanghai, and 25.8% from Shenzhen. Slightly more respondents (53.6%) are male (46.4% are female). In terms of residence, 60.1% of respondents are native residents and 39.9% are not. A majority of respondents are in the 20–39 year age range (77.3%). Employees working in private companies represent the largest percentage of respondents (33.1%), followed by commercial and service (18.7%) and self-employed
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(17.3%). Most respondents have an undergraduate degree (67%), 12.4% have a high
school education or less, and 13.8% have a postgraduate degree. Respondents with
monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan comprise 37% of the sample, followed by
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those with income in the range of 3,000–5,000 yuan (30.6%), and then those making
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less than 3,000 yuan (18.9%). Most of the respondents have more than five years of Internet experience (82.4%); 35.8% report daily Internet use for two to four hours,
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followed by 29.2% with a daily use for five to seven hours, and 21% with a daily use
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for eight hours or more. This means that a majority of participants are experienced
Insert Table 2 here.
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Internet users. Overall, the sample shows good representativeness and high diversity.
Measurement scales The constructs in this study are “service quality” (SQ), “overall perceived service
value” (OSV, 3 items), “value of efficiency” (VOE, 4 items), “value of democracy” (VOD, 4 items), “value of inclusiveness” (VOI, 4 items), “satisfaction” (SAT, 3 items), 37
and “continuous-use intention” (CUI, 3 items). In accordance with the discussion in Section 2, the eight contributors of service quality are system quality (SYQ, 4 items), reliability (REL, 3 items), security (SCT, 3 items), accessibility (ACB, 3 items), information quality (IQ, 4 items), service capability (SEC, 3 items), interactivity (INT, 3 items), and responsiveness (RES, 3 items). The measurement tool used in this research is a mixed questionnaire that consists
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of the existing validated scales translated from English and the self-designed Chinese items developed by the authors. For the items that were originally in English, we tested
our translations with back translation—that is, we first invited an independent Chinese
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native translator to translate the English items into Chinese and then invited an
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independent English native speaker to translate the Chinese items back into English to make sure the meaning is the same. The self-designed Chinese items were developed
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based on previous research, evaluation indexes of the FNGWC (General Office of the
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State Council, 2015), and interviews with scholars and officials of e-government in China. Because the works we referenced in the development of the Chinese items are
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from the e-commerce service context, we kept the content of dimensions and changed the original expressions to make them suitable for the e-government situation. SYQ3,
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SYQ4, REL1, REL2, SCT1, SCT2, SCT3, IQ2, IQ3, IQ4, INT1, INT3, and RPS1 are directly adapted from the studies of Wang et al. (2005), Wang and Liao (2008), Verdegem and Verleye (2009), Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2012), and Tan et al. (2013), and the remaining are self-designed. The scales of VOD, VOE, and VOI are self-developed based on the interviews with scholars and e-government officials in 38
China. OSV items are adapted from the analysis of Al-Hujran et al. (2015). CUI is measured by three items borrowed from Wangpipatwong et al. (2008). SAT is measured by three items modified from Li and Liu’s (2014) work. All items are measured using a five-point Likert scale bounded by “totally agree” (5) and “totally disagree” (1), with
Data Analysis
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“neutral” (3) in the middle.
We employ a three-stage approach to data analysis as follows. (1) Partial least squares (PLS) analysis with SmartPLS2.0 is used to test measurement models and
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identify the formative structure of service quality contributed by the eight attributes.
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(2) Path analysis is used to test the direction and strength of hypothesized relationships. (3) A bootstrap approach with Lisrel8.8 is used to validate the mediating
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mechanisms of the three dimensions of public value on the relationship between
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service quality and reuse intention. Test of measurement model
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Exploratory factor analysis is used to examine the dimensions of service quality. First, this study utilizes KMO and Bartlett’s tests to determine whether the collected
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data are suitable for factor analysis. The KMO value of the scale is 0.977 (> 0.5), which indicates that the data are suitable for factor analysis. The Bartlett’s test value of sphericity is 98701.66 (P < 0.000), which indicates that there are common factors existing in the correlation coefficient matrix. For the reflective measures, SPSS17.0 is used to calculate the internal consistency 39
coefficient of each measurement scale. The data are reliable if the internal consistency coefficient is greater than 0.7. When the number of items is less than six, the data are acceptable if the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) is greater than 0.6. Specifically, the internal consistency coefficients of system quality, information quality, service capacity, accessibility, security, reliability, responsiveness, interactivity, overall PSV, value of efficiency, value of democracy, value of inclusiveness, satisfaction, and
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continuous-use intention are 0.821, 0.822, 0.816, 0.843,0.811, 0.877, 0.881, 0.821,
0.788, 0.731, 0.786, 0.855,0.873, and 0.801, respectively. This shows that the measurement scales of each construct have high reliability and consistency with related
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items.
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As shown in Table 3, for the measurement model of the eight quality attributes, factor loadings of the corresponding potential variables are between 0.71 and 0.88. For
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the measurement instrument of PSV, factor loadings are between 0.71 and 0.87. Factor
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loadings of items measuring continuous-use intention (CUI) are between 0.77 and 0.81. Factor loadings of items measuring satisfaction (SAT) are between 0.81 and 0.85. The
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composite reliability (CR) of each latent variable is greater than 0.7, and the average variation extracted (AVE) is higher than 0.5. The results show that all measurement
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items are of high quality and have high reliability as well as convergent validity. Discriminant validity analysis results show that the square roots of average variation extractions of all the variables are higher than their correlation coefficients with other variables, indicating that the constructs can be easily distinguished from each other (see Table 4). 40
The formative measures should be treated differently in terms of reliability and validity tests because the variance of the latent construct under scrutiny is caused by the observable formative items. According to Tan et al. (2013) and Blut (2016), the statistics for reliability assessment of internal consistency, including Cronbach’s alpha, AVE, and CR, are not meaningful for formative measures, as they are not necessarily correlated. Multicollinearity is the major concern for formative constructs
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because the first-order constructs can jointly cause the variance of the corresponding
formative second-order constructs in a way similar to multiple regressions, leading to
unstable and inaccurate estimation of indicator weights. As shown in Table 4, none of
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the bivariate correlation coefficients is higher than 0.9, and all variance inflation
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factors are below 3.5, indicating that multicollinearity is not a problem in this
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research.
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Insert Table 3 here.
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Insert Table 4 here.
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Test of structural model
The eight indicators for service quality are supported by empirical results (see
Figure 4). Each of the eight indicators significantly explains the variance of service quality. The formative paths for the eight service quality indicators are as follows: system quality (β = 0.08*, p < 0.05), reliability (β = 0.11**, p < 0.01), security (β = 41
0.12**, p < 0.001), accessibility (β = 0.07*, p < 0.05), information quality (β = 0.22***, p < 0.001), service capability (β = 0.23***, p < 0.001), interactivity (β = 0.16***, p < 0.001), and responsiveness (β = 0.21***, p < 0.001). Service quality has a significant positive effect on all three dimensions of public value (efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness). The standardized path coefficient (t value) of service quality to efficiency is 0.48*** (18.11), to democracy is 0.11** (2.91),
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to inclusiveness is 0.34*** (15.62). Therefore, H7, H8, and H9 are supported. Moreover, all three dimensions of public value have significant positive effects on PSV. The standardized path coefficient (t value) of efficiency is 0.52*** (21.88), of democracy is
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0.13*** (5.21), and of inclusiveness is 0.38*** (17.21). The three dimensions explain
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71% of the variance in PSV. H1, H2, and H3 are supported. Moreover, service quality and PSV positively affect satisfaction with coefficients of 0.41*** (18.91) and 0.42***
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(19.12), respectively, and the two variables explain 62% of the variance of satisfaction.
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H5 and H6 are supported. Finally, PSV and satisfaction have a positive effect on CUI with the coefficients of 0.58*** (22.85) and 0.27*** (11.61), respectively, and the two
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variables explain 64% of the variance in continuous-use intention. Therefore, H4 and
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H10 are supported.
Insert Figure 4 here.
Significance test of mediating effect Bootstrapping approach in LISREL8.8 is used to test the significance of the 42
mediating effect of PSV. The bootstrapping approach is more suitable than other commonly used statistical methods such as the Sobel test in this circumstance because it is not subject to the normality assumptions of statistics and thus can provide unbiased estimates. The procedure adopted in this paper for the bootstrapping test is borrowed from Fang et al. (2013) and Hayes (2013). The criterion for judgment is that if 0 is not included in the 95% confidence interval of the average path coefficient, then the
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mediating effect is significant. As shown in Table 5, there are six average mediating
effects for which the 95% confidence intervals do not include 0. This indicates that PSV
is a significant mediating variable between e-government service quality and citizens’
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continuous-use intention.
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Insert Table 5 here.
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Discussion
To explore the interrelationship between government website service quality,
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perceived value, and the influences of both on citizens’ reuse intention, this study develops a chain model of e-government service quality, perceived value, and citizens’
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continuous-use intention that takes a means-end approach and integrates several egovernment service quality evaluation models. Using data collected from a survey of 1,650 citizen users living in one direct-controlled municipality and four highpopulation cities in China, this study verifies the formative structure of e-government service quality through PLS analysis and then tests the proposed concept model using 43
structural equation modeling. The following observations are of note. First, this research creates a formative construct of e-government service quality with eight indicators: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capacity, interactivity, and responsiveness. The first four indicators describe the efficiency of a government website as a delivery channel for public service, similar to the concept of service delivery quality suggested by Tan et al (2013). The last
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four indicators reflect the effectiveness of the service content provided by the
government website—how well it achieves promised outcomes and meets citizens’ needs. These four indicators are highly consistent with the concept of service content
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quality defined by Tan et al (2013).
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Among the eight indicators, information quality, service capacity, and responsiveness are found to be the stronger contributors to service quality, while the
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first-order dimensions that reflect the technical performance of e-government service
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contribute only a little to the service value, with coefficients hovering just approximately 0.1. Improvements in technology have addressed inaccessibility, system
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insecurity, and instability problems, such that now 90.8% of the portal systems of China’s government websites are in normal operation, according to the FNGWC. The
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result is that citizens who are familiar with e-government are inclined to take system quality and reliable operation for granted and therefore focus less on those factors when evaluating government websites’ service quality, which weakens the relationship between technical attributes and service quality. In other words, citizens’ assessments of e-government service quality depend more on the services available on government 44
portals, so attributes referring to service functions should be given more attention to achieve a high level of e-government service quality. Second, the importance of PSV in linking service quality and continuous-use intention is empirically supported in this research. Citizens’ perceptions of the value of e-government service are significantly predicted and strongly explained by the efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness promoted by e-government services, together
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accounting for 71% of the variance in PSV. Furthermore, e-government systems with high service quality are found to be more effective in inducing citizens to reuse their services mainly through improvements in efficiency and convenience, and the
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bootstrapping test results also confirm the mediating role of service value. These results
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further prove that the service quality acts as an essential premise of value, and a highvalue e-government service rests on users’ perception of value created by the services
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offered by government websites, such as information search, online transactions, and
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online communication between the government and the public (Karunasena and Deng, 2012; Al-Hujran et al., 2015). When citizens realize that government websites can
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provide useful information, make it possible to take care of transactions more efficiently, and facilitate their communication with the government, their perception of the value
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of government websites makes them desire to use those websites again in the future. This finding is consistent with the results of a previous value-based technology acceptance study that found the dominant influence on citizens’ continuous-use intention was perceived utility (a concept that is similar to perceived value in this study) (Wangpipatwong et al., 2008). 45
Finally, as hypothesized, continuous-use intention is a consequence of service quality, service value, and satisfaction. Our results reveal that PSV and satisfaction play a critical role in predicting citizens’ behavioral intention, together explaining 64% of continuous-use intention. Citizens’ decisions regarding whether to continue to use egovernment services are affected primarily by their perception of the public value generated by the e-government service. Although satisfaction is not the core variable in
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this research, the empirical results of our model indicate that service quality, service value, and satisfaction are interdependent, and that we must understand their interaction
to understand what motivates continuous use-intention in the context of e-government.
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As suggested above, these findings not only provide impressive empirical support
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for the belief-attitude-intention-behavior framework and theories based on this framework, such as the means-end chain theory, the service-value-loyalty chain model,
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and the IS continuance model, but also reconfirm the statement that service value and
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satisfaction are salient mediators between service quality and reuse intention (Grimsley
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& Meehan, 2007; Kettinger et al., 2009; Li and Liu, 2014).
Contributions, implications, limitations, and future research
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In the subsections that follow, we first detail our contributions—addition of
empirical evidence to the literature, in support of a formative model; a focus on the service element of perceived value of e-government; and creation of a comprehensive framework for understanding the interrelationships between service quality, service value, satisfaction, and reuse intention. We then describe the implications for 46
government, in partCUIlar where to focus efforts to improve e-government service quality and what factors, in addition to citizens’ continuous-use behavior, governments should also be taking into consideration. We then turn to limitations and directions for future research. Contributions This study contributes to e-government research in three ways. First, it adds
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empirical evidence, adopting a higher order and formative approach, similar to that used by scholars such as Ancarani (2005), Papadomichelaki and Mentzas (2009; 2012),
Qutaishat (2012) Lindgren and Jansson (2013), and Tan et al (2013), to analyze service
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quality in the field of e-government. It not only contributes to the operationalization of
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e-government service quality, supporting Tan et al.’s (2013) comprehensive conceptualization of e-government service quality but also deepens our theoretical
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understanding of the contributors to citizens’ perception of the quality of municipal
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government websites in countries whose e-government development is not yet at the level of the most developed countries.
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Creating value for the public should be the central purpose of e-government, but little attention has been paid to the antecedents and consequences of citizens’
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perceptions of that value. Subscribing to a public-value perspective, the second contribution this study makes is to explore the dimensions influencing the perceived value of e-government in a service-dominant way. This study treats perceived value as a mediator between service quality and continuous-use intention and examines the important role that perception of service value plays in citizens’ intention to continue 47
to use e-government websites. This study fills a gap in scholarship by testing and validating the concepts of service quality and perceived value as well as their influence on intention to reuse government websites. More importantly, although most prior relevant research examined factors influencing users’ intentions toward e-government based on classical IS acceptance theories such as the IS success model and the IS continuance model, this research
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develops an extended service-value-loyalty chain model, integrating the IS continuance
model and the quality-value-loyalty chain model, which is widely used in explaining customers’ purchasing behavior in marketing but rarely applied in IS research. Hence,
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by combining theories in an interdisciplinary way, this study makes a third contribution:
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it provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the interrelationships between service quality, service value, satisfaction, and reuse intention. The results
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highlight the significant interrelation between post-adoption behavioral intention and
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other relevant constructs, especially the critical effect of perceived value on reuse intention, and they also provide impressive support for the quality-value-loyalty chain
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developed by Parasuraman and Grewal (2000), in which PSV is a powerful mediator between service quality and continuous-use intention (Omar et al., 2011; Wang, C.,
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2014; Osmani, 2015). In agreement with the assertion of Cronin et al. (2000), the study also emphasizes the essentiality of proposing a simultaneous, multivariate analytical framework to examine determinants of citizens’ intentions to continue to use intention e-government services. Doing so recognizes the fact that citizens’ decision making is a complex process resulting from service quality, service value, and satisfaction and that 48
to omit or neglect any one of those will lead to incomplete understanding and inaccurate prediction of citizens’ post-using behaviors regarding e-government systems. Implications Practically, the results of this study have at least two policy implications. First, because the study finds (a) that service quality is a powerful driver of value creation and (b) that perception of service value depends significantly on how well e-
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government systems promote efficiency, democracy, and inclusiveness, one implication is that to enhance citizens’ perceptions of service value, e-government policymakers
and website designers must take comprehensive measures to improve service quality
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along the eight dimensions of system quality, reliability, security, accessibility,
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information quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness. Second, the results of this study suggest that technical features such as system quality, accessibility,
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and reliability only have very weak effects on citizens’ PSV, whereas service
na
characteristics such as information quality, service capability, and interactivity play a more important role in explaining citizens’ perceptions of value. Therefore, e-
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government value creation efforts should focus on service improvements such as providing citizens with precise and prompt information, convenient one-stop service
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delivery, and a secure online service environment, which, in turn, indirectly encourage citizens to reuse e-government services and will ultimately raise the e-government utilization rate. Third, the results suggest that e-government service providers who pursue higher citizens adoption rates should also be considering the effect of their initiatives on citizens’ perceived value and satisfaction with the services delivered. 49
Limitations and future research This study’s limitations indicate possible routes for future research. First, this study focuses on individual citizens who are the primary users of government websites, but business organizations, nonprofit organizations, and even public sector organizations are also important target groups for e-government services. Future research can be extended to these stakeholders and explore their reuse intentions, using the model we
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develop here. Second, in addition to portals, there are other e-channels that government can employ for interactions with the public, such as microblogs, official WeChat, and
mobile apps. These channels make possible the provision of diversified and
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personalized public services, which is a new trend in e-government in China. Thus,
re
another possibility for the future study is an investigation of citizens’ continuous-use behavior when using these emerging modalities, with the aim of testing the explanatory
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power and applicability of the conceptual model in the context of emerging e-
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government services. The third direction for future research has to do with the development of test items. In our case, we modified existing scales and experimental
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procedures whenever possible. For example, we interviewed scholars and officials in e-government, which may reduce the validity of newly designed items. Future research
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should try to develop new items in accordance with more formal procedure proposed by existing literature.
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Yaşlıoğlu, M., Çalışkan, B. Ö. Ö., & Şap, Ö. (2013). The role of innovation and
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perceived service quality in creating customer value: A study on employees of a call
re
center establishment. Social and Behavioral Sciences, 99, 629–635. Yu, C. C. (2008). Building a Value-Centric e-Government Service Framework
lP
Based on a Business Model Perspective. In M. A. Wimmer, H. J. Scholl, & E. Ferrom.
na
Electronic government (pp. 160–171). Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Yuan, L., Xi, C., & Wang, X. (2012). Evaluating the readiness of government
ur
portal websites in china to adopt contemporary public administration principles. Government Information Quarterly, 29(3), 403–412.
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Zeithaml, V. A. (1988). Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: A
means-end model and synthesis of evidence. Journal of Marketing, 52(3), 2–22.
About the Authors
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1.Yan Li, an assistant professor at Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China PR. Her research interest lies in E-government performance evaluation.
2.Huping Shang (Corresponding author), a professor at Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China PR. He lays his research interest in
Jo
ur
na
lP
re
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ro of
government performance evaluation and public service performance evaluation.
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Intrinsic
Perceived
Perceived
attributes
quality
value
Purchase
Figure 1. A means-end model relating price, quality, and value Source: V. A. Zeithaml (1988). “Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: A means-end model and synthesis of evidence,” Journal of Marketing, 52(3), 2–22.
Perceived Usefulness IS Continuance Intention
ro of
Satisfaction
Confirmation
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Figure 2. IS continuance model Source: Bhattacherjee, A. (2001). “Understanding information systems continuance: An expectation-confirmation model.” MIS Quarterly, 25(3), 351–370.
Means-End Chain Theory
re
Quality attributes System quality
Security
Service
Accessibility
Quality
l
Continuous-
Democracy value
Servic
Use intention
Inclusiveness
e value
value
na
Information quality
Overall
Overal
Efficiency value
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Reliability
Value dimensions
Service capability Interactivity
Satisfaction
Responsiveness
ur
IS Continuance Theory
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Figure 3. A chain model of e-government service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention
70
SYQ 0.08*
REL
0.11**
SCT
0.12***
EFV
0.48***
ACS
0.22***
IQ
SEC
0.52***
0.23***
R2=0.64
R2=0.71
0.07*
S Q
0.11**
0.58***
0.13***
DEV 0.34***
PSV
CUI
0.38***
INV 0.42***
0.16***
0.27***
0.41***
ro of
INT
0.21***
SAT
RPS
R2=0.62
Figure 4. Results of structural model analysis
Jo
ur
na
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re
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Significance: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
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Table 1. Recent e-government quality evaluation dimensions Authors
Measurement Dimension
Object
Connectivity, actuality, navigability, accessibility, interactivity, and
Swiss French official
(2004)
transparency
website
Barnes and Vidgen (2003)
Usability (site design), information quality (accuracy, format, and
UK Inland Revenue
relevance), and service quality (trust and empathy)
website
Sukasame (2004)
Reliability, content, ease of use, linkage, and self-service
Thai public websites
Jansen and Ølnes (2004)
Accessibility, user orientation, and useful services
Norwegian
Glassey
and
Glassey
public
websites Horan et al. (2006)
Effectiveness, productivity, safety, and user satisfaction
US Advanced Travel Information Systems
Electronic services (general services, education, economic affairs,
12 cities in 35 EU
social services, and cultural/leisure/sports), electronic participation
countries
ro of
Torres et al. (2006)
(political dimension, fiscal responsibility, and civic dialogue), and network maturity
Omar et al. (2011)
Online service, navigation, user assistance, information structure,
American
legal protection, and accessibility adjustment
government websites
Information
quality
personalization,
(completeness,
and
relevance,
ease
of
security),
understanding,
system
None
quality
-p
Baker (2009)
(adaptability, availability, reliability, response time, and usability), and service quality (assurance, empathy, and responsiveness)
and
Jordanian government
responsiveness
websites
Ease of use, reliability, trust, citizen support, content and appearance
Greek
Mentzas (2009, 2012)
of information, and functionality of the interactive environment
websites
Tan et al. (2013)
Training,
United
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Papadomichelaki
Design, interactivity, security, informativeness, empathy, trust, and
re
Qutaishat (2012)
monitoring,
upgrading,
scheduling,
delegating,
negotiating, and evaluating; needing function and customizing
government
States
government websites.
function; and sourcing, trying, ordering, paying, tracking, accepting,
Hu et al. (2014)
na
and authorizing function
Content service capability (information service, transaction service,
102 cities in mainland
and participation service), service delivery capability, and on-
China
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demand capability
City
Frequency
Table 2. Sample profile Percentag
Frequency
Percentage （%）
e （%）
Shenyang
262
15.9
Changsha
278
16.8
Chengdu
302
18.3
Shanghai
384
23.2
Shenzhen
424
25.8
Occupation
72
Retired
50
3
Student
98
6
Other
32
2
Gender
Age
Occupation
Native
992
60.1
Middle school
110
6.7
Non-Native
658
39.9
High school
205
12.4
Male
885
53.6
Bachelor
1106
67
Female
855
46.4
Postgraduate
229
13.8
=<20
35
2.1
Income
=<1000
222
13.5
20–29
706
42.8
(yuan/month)
1,001–3,000
312
18.9
30–39
602
36.4
3,001–5,000
506
30.6
40–49
201
12.2
>=5,001
610
37
50–59
71
4.3
Daily
=<2 hours
231
14
>=60
35
2.2
Internet
2–4 hours
590
35.8
Government
118
7.1
Usage
5–7 hours
481
29.2
Shiye Unit
182
11
>=8 hours
348
21
Private
546
33.1
=<1 year
30
1.8
Education
Internet
Company
Experience
Commercial and
ro of
Household
309
18.7
1–5 years
261
15.8
Self-Employed
285
17.3
6–10 years
612
37.1
Unemployed
30
1.8
>=10 years
747
45.3
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Service
Table 3. Results of reliability and validity tests Factor
CR
AVE
loading
SYQ1. I can successfully log on to the government website every time.
0.88
SYQ2. I can successfully visit the related links provided at the home page.
0.82
SYQ3. Using the website lets me surfs effortlessly through relevant webpages while
lP
SYQ
re
Description of items
0.81
REL1. The website system operated stably for the e-government transactions.
0.82
REL2. Faults I encountered when using websites can be corrected as soon as possible to
0.87
0.91
0.71
0.89
0.72
0.78
0.55
0.85
0.66
performing my e-government transactions.
SYQ4. The function modules on government websites are arranged in a user-friendly
REL
na
way.
0.85
ensure the reliable operation of the system.
SCT
ur
REL3. All the functions and services on the website operate normally. SCT1. I know that my personal information submitted to the government websites is
0.86 0.74
used in a secure manner.
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SCT2. The website has adequate security measures to protect my personal information
0.75
from being stolen or leaked. SCT3. I trust that hackers will not be able to access the information I provide when
0.74
performing my e-government transactions.
ACB
ACB1. I’m informed and introduced to how to use the website by the government
0.82
through various initiatives, which makes me have equal access to online public service. ACB2. I do not encounter any problem in accessing the website using my computer to
0.79
perform my e-government transactions. ACB3. I do not need to perform complicated technical configurations in order to access services on government websites. 73
0.83
SEC
SEC1. I am able to complete different e-government transactions using the same website.
0.81
SEC2. All functions needed to complete my required service are available from the
0.82
0.87
0.68
0.83
0.55
0.87
0.72
websites. SEC3. The website lets me complete transaction provided by different governmental
0.86
organizations. IQ
RPS
IQ1. Information provided at the website is up-to-date.
0.77
IQ2. I can quickly find the required information on the website.
0.75
IQ3. The information provided by the website is well organized.
0.71
IQ4. The website provides accurate information about relevant services.
0.73
RPS1. The website can inform me of the progress of my transaction by e-mail or
0.88
message. 0.83
RPS3. The website system responded in a timely fashion during my e-government
0.84
ro of
RRS2. The website takes prompt action when I encounter problems performing my task.
transaction. INT
INT1. Using the websites makes me communicate with government more easily.
0.79
INT2. Public opinion surveys and interactive interviews are often held on government
0.82
websites.
0.74
VE1. Using government website is an efficient way to access public service.
0.81
VE2. I value the convenience brought by government website in service delivery.
0.75
VE3. Using e-government system to access public service increases the government
0.83
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VOE
INT3. Using the websites makes me feel more involved in public decisions.
VOD
re
efficiency.
VD1.Using government website to access service makes me know more about what the government is doing.
0.85
0.71
VD3. Using government website to access service increases the government
0.82
transparency.
lP
VD2. Using government website to access service brings me closer to public affairs.
na
VD4. Using government website to access service increases the government
0.83
0.61
0.84
0.64
0.86
0.61
0.87
0.68
0.88
0.71
0.83
0.62
0.75
accountability. VOI
VI1. Using government website makes the public service more available to more people.
0.87
VI2. Using government website is valuable to providing equal public service to all
0.82
ur
citizens.
VI3. Using government website makes the disadvantaged groups benefit more from
0.79
public service.
OSV1. Overall, I believe that using government website to access public service
Jo
OSV
0.82
provides public value. OSV2. The value I receive from government website is worth of the time, effort and
0.85
money I have invested. OSV3. The value derives from services on government website is worth of the time,
0.85
effort and money the government have invested.
CUI
CUI1. I intend to increase the use of government websites in the future.
0.77
CUI2. I will recommend others to use government websites.
0.78
CUI3. In the future, I will consider e-Government websites to be my first choice to do
0.81
business with the government. 74
SAT
SAT1. I am satisfied with the service I received from the government websites.
0.83
SAT2. I am very pleased with my past experience of using government website service.
0.85
SAT3. The government website provides satisfied public services that meet my needs.
0.81
0.87
Table 4. Interconstruct correlation matrix REL
SCT
ACB
SEC
IQ
RPS
INT
VOE
0.84
REL
0.45
0.85
SCT
0.41
0.35
0.74
ACB
0.32
0.33
0.46
0.81
SEC
0.36
0.47
0.32
0.31
0.82
IQ
0.39
0.52
0.43
0.27
0.43
0.74
RPS
0.41
0.38
0.44
0.25
0.37
0.42
0.85
INT
0.52
0.19
0.11
0.39
0.28
0.35
0.42
0.78
VOE
0.22
0.34
0.12
0.51
0.33
0.33
0.41
0.37
0.80
VOD
0.21
0.51
0.34
0.11
0.30
0.22
0.32
0.34
0.41
VOI
0.34
0.42
0.27
0.13
0.42
0.46
0.21
0.23
0.32
OSV
0.41
0.27
0.29
0.32
0.15
0.31
0.16
0.22
0.37
SAT
0.28
0.25
0.19
0.47
0.25
0.28
0.11
0.17
0.27
CUI
0.45
0.26
0.28
0.22
0.13
0.16
0.24
0.25
0.22
VOI
OSV
SAT
CUI
0.78 0.41
0.82
0.34
0.17
0.84
0.22
0.19
0.73
0.83
0.23
0.29
0.75
0.55
-p
SYQ
VOD
ro of
SYQ
0.79
re
Notes: The diagonal is the square root of the average variation extraction (AVE), and the left and the bottom values are the variable correlation coefficients. Table 5. Bootstrapping analysis of the mediation effect of perceived service value Mediating variable
Dependent variable
Average effect
SQ SQ SQ EFV DEV INV
EFV DEV INV PSV PSV PSV
PSV PSV PSV CUI CUI CUI
0.25 0.014 0.013 0.31 0.075 0.22
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Independent variable
75
95% confidence interval
Lower limit 0.076 0.06 0.031 0.118 0.053 0.155
Upper limit 0.161 0.09 0.079 0.188 0.101 0.202
0.69