Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain

GOVINF-01179; No. of pages: 12; 4C: Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain María-Dolores Guillamón a,⁎, Ana-María Ríos b, Benedetta Gesuele c, Concetta Metallo d a

Department of Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Murcia, Campus of Espinardo, 30100 Murcia, Spain Department of Economics and Juridical Sciences, University Centre of Defence at the Spanish Air Force Academy, Spanish Ministry of Defence - Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT), Base Aérea de San Javier (Academia General del Aire), C/ Coronel López Peña, s/n, 30720 Santiago de la Ribera, Murcia, Spain c Department of Law, University of Parthenope, 13 Generale Parisi Street, 80130 Naples, Italy d Department of Science and Technology, University of Parthenope, 13 Generale Parisi Street, 80130 Naples, Italy b

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 20 July 2015 Received in revised form 6 June 2016 Accepted 11 June 2016 Available online xxxx Keywords: Transparency e-Disclosure Municipalities Web 2.0 Social media Facebook

a b s t r a c t Social media offer governments a new approach to create transparency and accountability, to increase citizens' opportunities to participate and collaborate in decision making or to enable the improvement of public services. This study is a first step toward understanding the use of social media tools by local governments for transparency purposes. The aim of this paper is to construct a synthetic indicator to measure Facebook use by local governments to disclose information and analyse the determinants of varying levels of Facebook use. Our sample consists of 217 Italian and Spanish local governments which used Facebook in 2014. Our findings show that level of e-participation, population size, citizens' income level and level of indebtedness have an impact on Facebook use by local governments. A high level of Facebook use would suggest that local governments tend to enable citizens to oversee government making more transparent information, data and processes. Thus, this study contributes to the debate on local government transparency and provides important guidelines for developing appropriate social media strategies and policies. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The importance of transparency is acknowledged by practitioners in many policy fields. It is an essential ingredient for effective political control and public sector monitoring. Public sector transparency stems from policies, institutions and practices that provide information in ways that improve understanding of public policies, enhance political effectiveness and reduce policy uncertainty (Guillamón, Bastida, & Benito, 2011). Transparency requires the disclosure of all relevant information in a timely and systematic manner. Thus, transparency helps societies to enhance their governments' positive contributions while also helping to solve problems inherent to government activity. Information about policy is an input for ex-ante political control of the public sector, for dayto-day responses to policy and for ex-post monitoring and evaluation. It is therefore an essential component of appropriate public governance (OECD, 2003). ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.-D. Guillamón), [email protected] (A.-M. Ríos), [email protected] (B. Gesuele), [email protected] (C. Metallo).

In the past few years, there has been considerable growth of electronic government (e-government) projects using information and communications technology (ICTs) to help governments in service delivery and information provision online (e-disclosure). New technologies promote interconnectivity between government and citizens, companies, employees, and others, as well as encouraging transparency, decentralization, and internal and external accountability (La Porte, Demchak, & De Jong, 2002; Currie & Guah, 2006). The Internet has become an important tool in increasing public transparency and accountability, which are key drivers for good governance in the public sector (Bonsón, Torres, Rayo, & Flores, 2012). The Web 2.0 applications, in general, and social media, in particular, represent the latest step in Internet use by government. The social media can be considered as the best expression of Web 2.0, a term coined by O'Really (2005) to indicate a second generation of web based applications. Social media provide new and innovative methods for immediate interaction between citizens and governments (Jaeger, Bertot, & Shilton, 2012), becoming “a central component of e-government in a very short period of time” (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012). Specifically, scholars have highlighted the benefits of social media in the public sector for openness and transparency (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Picazo-Vela, Gutierrez-Martinez, &

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005 0740-624X/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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Luna-Reyes, 2012; Bertot et al., 2012; Bonsón et al., 2012; Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Zheng & Zheng, 2014). In particular, Bertot et al. (2010) show that social media offer governments a new approach to create transparency and promote anti-corruption. For example, politicians have several incentives to disclose information in order to improve citizens' control of public activities, especially the use of public resources, so reducing barriers of space and time (Ingram & Dejong, 1987). The success of social media use as transparency and anti-corruption tools implies (Bertot et al., 2010) a culture of transparency embedded within the governance system; and a transparency “readiness” factor, such as technology penetration, technology capabilities, and social and technology readiness of the citizens. In recent years, many municipalities have started to use several social media to communicate with citizens as an additional form of online communication (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube). Through social media, citizens leave their passive role and become “customers” that are able to interact with government (Bonsón et al., 2012). In particular, the benefits of social media for municipalities include (Bonsón et al., 2012): (a) easier mass distribution of the content of the official website, allowing users to redistribute these contents through their own blogs or social networks; and (b) open corporate dialogue, so that citizens have the opportunity of publishing their own points of view on the material distributed by local governments. These issues have become an interesting area of inquiry for Public Management scholars and Information Systems researchers. In this vein, Mossberger, Wu, and Crawford (2013) state that local government is an important subject for the study of social media because of traditions of citizen participation at the local level. However, although the adoption of Web 2.0 applications by municipalities is rising considerably, academic research on Web 2.0 applications and social media in the local governments is still in its early stages. Accordingly, this paper aims to contribute to this research gap by analysing the social media use by local governments for enhancing transparency. Specifically, we build a synthetic indicator to measure Facebook use by local governments and we analyse the determinants of varying levels of Facebook use, using a sample of Spanish and Italian municipalities in 2014. A high level of Facebook use implies that local governments making information, data and processes more transparent tend to enable citizens to oversee government. We focus on Facebook because this social media dominates the web landscape and is being used more and more by local governments. Moreover, local governments in Italy and Spain provide an ideal institutional setting to analyse these phenomena. Both countries already have legislation that regulates the mandatory e-disclosure through municipalities' websites. However, in these countries, e-disclosure through social media is rising ever more, despite its being voluntary. Our findings reveal that level of e-participation, population size, citizens' income level and level of indebtedness affect Facebook use by local governments. Therefore, these factors influence on the level of municipal transparency through social media. This study makes important contributions to the existing literature on transparency. First, we extend prior research on local government transparency (e.g., Bonsón et al., 2012; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Mossberger et al., 2013), focusing on factors that determine the propensity of municipalities to the information disclosure via social media. We believe that social media have some features that differentiate greatly from website, tool mainly investigated in the empirical literature on edisclosure. Therefore, the literature needed further development with regard to the factors that contribute to transparency via social media as well as to the contexts in which transparency is applied. Moreover, understanding the factors that influence the use of social media offers public managers important guidelines for increasing the level of transparency as to suggest input in order to develop appropriate strategies

and policies for enhancing the potential of social media. Today, the challenge is to understand how social media applications are used and interpreted within the public organizations (Bretschneider & Mergel, 2011). The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature and the determinants of e-disclosure and goes into social media use by municipalities. Section 3 provides details of the research context (Italy and Spain). Section 4 describes the sample, variables and econometric model. Section 5 presents the empirical results and the discussion. Section 6 concludes. 2. Literature review 2.1. The basis of e-disclosure in local governments Agency theory and neoinstitutional framework represent the most commonly applied theoretical backgrounds for understanding disclosure online (e-disclosure) by local governments. The relationship between politicians and citizens (voters) can be described as an agency relationship, where the politician is the agent and the citizen is the principal (Banker & Patton, 1987). Both politicians and citizens (voters) are assumed to be self-interested (Zimmerman, 1977). Among incumbents' interests, Zimmerman (1977) highlights re-election, advance in political/professional careers and increase in current and future incomes. Citizens' wealth is related to agents' actions and therefore they have an incentive to monitor politicians' actions (Baber, 1983). Accordingly, citizens press politicians to disclose information as a way of weakening information asymmetry and of enabling monitoring of politicians' activities (Zimmerman, 1977; Ingram & Dejong, 1987). On the other hand, politicians disclose information to citizens in order to gain public confidence and honour pre-election promises (Laswad, Fisher, & Oyelere, 2005). In this regard, Pina, Torres, and Royo (2010), argue that local governments can use information disclosure on the Internet to allow citizens to monitor their performance better. In particular, Bertot et al. (2010) show that social media offer governments a new tool to create transparency. The neoinstitutional theory highlights the role of social influences and environmental pressures on organization behaviours (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). According to Meyer and Rowan (1977), formal organizational structures arise in highly institutionalized contexts, incorporating practices and procedures and increasing their legitimacy and survival prospective. To survive, organizations must accommodate institutional expectations, and thus, their organizational behaviours are responses not only to market pressures but also to institutional pressures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). In this perspective, institutional pressures lead organizations to adopt the same organizational form, generating a phenomenon known as isomorphism. According to this framework, institutional pressures could affect e-disclosure style in the local government (Wang, 2002). In fact, Berry et al. (2004) state that e-government projects and, therefore, online disclosure practices, are often implemented in response to external pressures. 2.2. Social media in local governments Social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In practice, Web 2.0 is the technical platform on which social media applications are built to create and exchange user-generated content (Picazo-Vela et al., 2012). These tools offer services such as blogs, microblogs, media (audio, photo, video, text) sharing, collaborative projects, virtual worlds, and social networking, so promoting the creation and support of social interaction, collaboration, and the exchange of information between users (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Nowadays, there are hundreds of different social media

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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platforms, which vary considerably in their purposes (Lee & Kwak, 2012): some social media enable people to express themselves by sharing with others text, picture, video, and music (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), while others enable people to work together to achieve common goals (e.g., Wiki and Google Docs). The rapid diffusion of social media applications is ushering in new ways for governments to communicate and engage with the public. These new applications present opportunities for community leaders, elected officials and government service providers to inform and be informed by citizens (Kavanaugh et al., 2012). Many scholars have pointed out the opportunities provided by Web 2.0 applications for government, such as improved transparency and accountability, through dissemination information to the citizens (Bertot et al., 2010; Chun, Shulman, Sandoval-Almazan, & Hovy, 2010; Cromer, 2010; Jaeger & Bertot, 2010; Bonsón et al., 2012); the improvement of policy making, by increasing opportunities to participate and collaborate in decision making or voting (Chun et al., 2010; Bonsón et al., 2012); or the improvement of public services, providing, for example, feedback about services and design contents (Bonsón et al., 2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2012). However, other studies posit that the adoption of social media by the government can lead to several disadvantages, such as loss of control due to excessive transparency (Ferro & Molinari, 2010); the low level of participation or destructive behaviour by users (Anttiroiko, 2010); problems of privacy and security (Bryer & Zavattaro, 2011; Bertot et al., 2012); or the lack of citizen-centred culture and the risks related to communication styles (Picazo-Vela et al., 2012). In this regard, Picazo-Vela et al. (2012) show that a good implementation strategy by government is necessary to benefit from social media while avoiding risks, as well as for updating laws and regulations for promoting changes in government culture and organizational practices. The number of users has risen rapidly and social media are becoming more relevant for public administrations for promoting interactions between government and citizens and for disseminating government information, so enabling stakeholders to engage in governance. In line with the increased popularity of social media in the government, there has been a significant growth of studies investigating this issue. Magro (2012) highlights that in 2010 there was an explosion of research on social media and e-government projects. The central themes in the literature concern mainly social media policy and strategy (see, e.g., PicazoVela et al., 2012), case studies (see, e.g., Cottica & Bianchi, 2010), and social media use in disaster management (see, e.g., Yates & Paquette, 2011; Kavanaugh et al., 2012). Social media applications have been implemented at different levels of public administration (central, regional, and local government) all around the world. Specifically, the social media usage by local governments has become an important subject of study because the adoption of social media applications by municipalities is rising considerably and because of traditions of citizen participation at the local level (Mossberger et al., 2013). In this sense, Norris and Reddick (2013), find that two-thirds of United States' local governments had adopted at least one social medium (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube). However, they mainly use social media to deliver information and services online but there are few transactions and limited interactivity, especially from government to citizens. Bonsón et al. (2012) show that most EU local governments use social media, although the use of these applications to promote e-participation is still in its infancy. The literature has analysed social media use by municipalities in order to recommend practical guidelines to improve transparency and interaction (Klang & Nolin, 2011); for particular purposes, such as managing crisis situations, from the routine (e.g., traffic, weather crises) to the critical (e.g., earthquakes, floods) (Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Oliveira & Welch, 2013); and for constructing indexes of social media interactivity (Bonsón et al., 2012; Mossberger et al., 2013), among others.

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2.3. Determinants of e-disclosure and social media The empirical literature on e-disclosure has focused on information disclosure through websites. Most of these studies aimed to build an e-disclosure index, summarizing the information disclosure on municipalities, and to identify its determinants at the local level (see, e.g., Laswad et al., 2005; Serrano-Cinca, Rueda-Tomás, & Portillo-Tarragona, 2009; Gallego-Álvarez, Rodríguez-Domínguez, & García-Sánchez, 2010; Guillamón et al., 2011; Jorge, Sá, Pattaro, & Lourenço, 2011). Nowadays, social media have become an increasing and central way of presenting government information, connecting citizens to government services, and engaging people to participate in governance for improving civic discourse. Indeed, social media are considered as an alternative way through which local governments have the opportunity to foster transparency and accountability (Bertot et al., 2012). However, few studies have investigated the adoption of social media tools for information disclosure and its determinants by local governments (see, e.g., Klang & Nolin, 2011; Bonsón et al., 2012; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Mossberger et al., 2013; Oliveira & Welch, 2013). In this sense, we contribute to the current literature by analysing the level of social media use by local governments for transparency purposes and its determinants. Henceforth, we mainly present the results obtained in e-disclosure empirical studies because, as stated above, the literature on the determinants of social media disclosure at the local level is rather scarce. Nevertheless, we think that although the e-disclosure concept is broader than social media disclosure - in fact, social media is a tool for e-disclosure - these results can, to some extent, be extrapolated. From the literature, we identified three groups of determinants that can influence e-disclosure, and in turn, social media use: socio-economic determinants (citizens' participation online, population size, municipal multiculturalism, citizens' income, internet penetration and citizens' education), financial determinants (financial autonomy and the level of indebtedness of the municipality) and political determinants (gender of mayor and political ideology).

2.3.1. Socio-economic determinants E-government offers the possibility of increasing interaction between citizens and governments, which distinguishes it from the traditional public administration (Chadwick & May, 2003; OECD, 2003). Electronic participation (e-participation) initiatives such as participatory budgets, electronic voting or information collection via forums and social media permit greater population participation in political decision-making since the barriers to participation are significantly lowered (Moon, 2002; Brewer, Neubauer, & Geiselhart, 2006; Stanley & Weare, 2004). Moreover, e-participation not only leads people to perceive governments as significantly more responsive and so enhances their trust in governments it also provides incentives for governments to publish more and better information (Halvorsen, 2003; Welch, Hinnant, & Moon, 2005; Tolbert & Mossberger, 2006). In this regard, Kim (2007) states that when more voices and inputs from the public are allowed, or when citizens are allowed to participate in decision-making processes online, electronic government is more responsive and accountable and, in turn, will disclose more information. In fact, citizens' participation online requires feedback from government and therefore the latter is also encouraged to publish more information (e.g. through social media) in order for both citizens and governments to obtain benefits (Halavais, 2009). Thus, we propose the following hypothesis: H1. : There is a positive relationship between e-participation and social media use by local governments. Moreover, conflicts of interest between citizens and governments are more likely in larger municipalities and the advantage of disclosing information is correspondingly greater (Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009). According to agency theory, larger municipalities present greater

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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information asymmetry between politicians and citizens. Thus, these governments are expected to face higher voters' demands to disclose information as a way to reduce this asymmetry and to allow the latter to evaluate incumbents' performance (Zimmerman, 1977; Ingram & Dejong, 1987). In these contexts, the web or social media can be considered as a strategic tool which favours immediate communication with citizens and reduces the agency costs (Cárcaba & García-García, 2010). Indeed, in larger municipalities people have less face-to-face contacts and use more web applications as communication tools. Moreover, the cost of preparing and disclosing information on the Internet is considered as fixed. Therefore, these costs become lower in larger municipalities, since they benefit from economies of scale. Previous empirical studies find a positive relationship between population size and web applications (website or social media) diffusion by municipalities (e.g., Styles & Tennyson, 2007; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009; Cárcaba & García-García, 2010; Gallego-Álvarez et al., 2010; Pina et al., 2010; Guillamón et al., 2011; Bonsón et al., 2012; Gibby, Smith, Pang, & Toorn, 2014). However, other authors do not find any statistically significant relationship (Laswad et al., 2005). In agreement with the literature that emphasizes the positive relationship between population size and e-disclosure, and in turn, social media diffusion, we propose the following hypothesis: H2. : There is a positive relationship between population size and social media use by local governments. Prior studies have also shown that some demographic characteristics, such as the presence of foreign citizens within the municipality, are potential determinants of the demand for transparency and, consequently, could promote information disclosure through the Internet (websites, social media, etc.) (Ingram & Copeland, 1981; Piotrowski & Van Ryzin, 2007). There is a growing literature on how ICTs can support social inclusion policy, so contributing to social cohesion (Van Winden, 2001; (Van der Meer & Van Winden, 2003; Maya-Jariego, Cruz, Molina, Patraca, & Tschudin, 2009). Furthermore, some institutions, like the European Commission highlight the role of ICTs for integration and social inclusion of ethnic groups (European Commission, 2005). The presence of foreign citizens within a municipality indicates that there are several cultures, with different language, attitudes, or technology skills. In this sense, Internet can help remove social, cultural, or racial barriers, since it is a user-friendly mass media (Paganoni, 2012). Therefore, municipalities with high multiculturalism could have higher e-disclosure diffusion to reduce social exclusion and foreign citizens' engagement (Van der Meer & Van Winden, 2003). Thus, we propose the following hypothesis: H3. : There is a positive relationship between multiculturalism and social media use by local governments. The level of income of citizens has also been traditionally considered as e-disclosure determinant (e.g., Laswad et al., 2005; Gandía & Archidona, 2008; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009; Bonsón et al., 2012; Albalate, 2013; Gesuele & Alvino, 2014; Gibby et al., 2014). People with higher economic status are more likely to have access to new technology and to know how to use it. Similarly, Tat-Kei Ho (2002) shows that people with lower per capita incomes are less inclined to use the web tools to communicate. Thus, municipalities whose citizens have a higher economic status and, therefore, make greater use of Internet, are more prone to offer services and disclose information via Internet through websites and/or social media (Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009). Hence, we propose: H4. : There is a positive relationship between citizens' income level and social media use by local governments. The technology gap between people with different economic levels, known as the digital divide, limits citizens' opportunities to use ICTs for a wide variety of activities (Norris, 2001; Justice, Melitski, & Smith,

2006). Scholars identify the growth of Internet use by citizens as a prerequisite for e-government projects'success (Tolbert, Mossberger, & McNeal, 2008; Jaeger & Bertot, 2010; Bertot et al., 2010; Gallego-Álvarez et al., 2010; Rodríguez-Domínguez, García-Sánchez, & Gallego-Álvarez, 2011; Bonsón et al., 2012). Internet penetration is considered a critical factor in implementing e-government transparency initiatives (Bertot et al., 2010; Bonsón et al., 2012). When Internet penetration level rises, there are more possibilities that citizens will use web tools (such as website or social media) to interact with public administrations. Therefore, if Internet penetration is high, citizens will be more likely to visit government websites or social media and demand information. Moreover, if the number of visitors to government web tools increases, the government may improve its management of them (Kim, 2007). Previous empirical studies find a positive and significant relationship between Internet penetration and e-disclosure (Caba, Rodríguez, & López, 2008; Tolbert et al., 2008). Nevertheless, Kim (2007) and Pina et al. (2010) do not report a significant association between these two variables. In agreement with the literature that emphasizes the positive relationship between Internet penetration and e-disclosure, the following hypothesis is proposed: H5. : There is a positive relationship between Internet penetration and social media use by local governments. However, it is not only important that governments extend ICTs use, it is also the governments' responsibility to make available education to facilitate online citizens' interaction with government (Bertot et al., 2010). In this regard, previous studies have stated that citizens' education level is an important factor in promoting e-disclosure (Ingram, 1984; Cheng, 1992; McNeal, Schmeida, & Hale, 2007; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009). A higher degree of educational attainment implies an increased likelihood of Internet use by the population (Mossberger, Tolbert, & Stansbury, 2003; Kolodinsky, Hogarth, & Hilgert, 2004; Chaudhuri, Flamm, & Horrigan, 2005; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009; Sautter, Tippett, & Morgan, 2010). Internet use requires technical skills and ability to search, use and interpret information (Mossberger, Tolbert, & Gilbert, 2004). In this sense, Evans and Yen (2005) and Porter and Donthu (2006) assume that citizens should have an appropriate education level to acquire the necessary computer skills for egovernment development and, therefore, to examine the government information available on-line (on websites or social media). Consequently, a well-educated population will exert pressure on public administrations to disclose information via Internet (Tolbert et al., 2008; Rodríguez-Domínguez et al., 2011), so increasing level of e-disclosure. Some previous studies observe a significant positive effect of education level on e-disclosure (Kim, 2007; Huang, 2007; Gandía & Archidona, 2008; Tolbert et al., 2008), although other authors do not find a significant relationship (Rodríguez-Domínguez et al., 2011). Thus, we propose the following hypothesis: H6. : There is a positive relationship between education level and social media use by local governments.

2.3.2. Financial determinants Previous studies show that governments' financial conditions may influence their attitude to implement e-government projects or to use social media as a means to promote openness and transparency (Islam, 2003; Grigorescu, 2003; Roberts, 2006; Neuman & Calland, 2007; Relly & Sabharwal, 2009). For example, La Porte et al. (2002) and Bertot et al. (2010) underline that wealthier governments are generally better equipped to pursue e-government projects and so exhibit a high level of transparency online. The literature has also studied the relationship between the increase of funding resources, such as proper revenues (essentially taxes and fees) and debt, and e-disclosure (Debreceny, Gray, & Rahman, 2002;

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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Laswad et al., 2005; Styles & Tennyson, 2007; Cárcaba & García-García, 2010; Jorge et al., 2011). Governments with higher proper revenues may feel more responsible and give citizens more explanations on where and how these revenues are spent (Jorge et al., 2011). Therefore, they tend to disclose more information through different media, including websites or social media. In the same vein, the literature supports that higher public debt is associated with higher disclosure. Governments with higher levels of debt have incentives to reduce the cost of debt and thus increase the financial resources available for other programs that enhance incumbents' welfare. This makes politicians disclose voluntary information as a way of showing their ability to face up to their obligations (Zimmerman, 1977; Ingram & Dejong, 1987). These disclosure incentives increase as the portion of debt in a local government's financial structure increases. In this way, Internet is likely to be an efficient means of disclosing information, since it helps to monitor government activities easily and regularly (Debreceny et al., 2002). Thus, we propose the following hypotheses: H7. : There is a positive relationship between financial autonomy (higher proper revenues) and social media use by local governments. H8. : There is a positive relationship between indebtedness and social media use by local governments. 2.3.3. Political determinants Given that local governments are managed by people (politicians), their personality may influence the municipality's administrative style. Thus, politicians may or may not foster social media usage. The analysis of politicians' personality is complex. In any case, previous research has highlighted the differences in political engagement between men and women (Verba, Norman, & Joe, 1978; Jennings, 1983; Piotrowski & Van Ryzin, 2007; Guillamón et al., 2011; Albalate, 2013; Taipale, 2013; Gesuele & Alvino, 2014). Verba et al. (1978) and Jennings (1983) investigate participatory inequality between men and women. They find that gender is related to political activity: men are more active than women. In this sense, Piotrowski and Van Ryzin (2007) and Taipale (2013) state that men may be more likely to require information than women, as the former have a higher level of political engagement. On the other hand, La Porte et al. (2002) assert that when women have a prominent role in society, governments are more likely to disclose information, since certain values such as sharing and building relationships among various groups in society prevail. Accordingly, the gender of the mayor may be a political determinant of information disclosure via the Internet through both websites and/or social media. Thus, we hypothesise: H9. : There is a relationship between gender of mayor and social media use by local governments. The political ideology of the ruling party may also influence e-disclosure practices (see, e.g., Tolbert et al., 2008; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009; García-Sánchez, Frías-Aceituno, & Rodríguez-Domínguez, 2013; Bonsón et al., 2012). Bonsón et al. (2012) argue that the development of an active presence in social media platforms is dependent on the political will of each local government. For example, Tolbert et al. (2008) argue that right-wing governments, which are inclined to lower public spending, are more likely to adopt e-government initiatives and, therefore, disclose more online information, since this implies increased efficiency and cost reduction. In contrast, other studies find that left-wing governments are more transparent than right-wing ones (Ferejohn, 1999; Cárcaba & García-García, 2010; Guillamón et al., 2011; García-Sánchez et al., 2013). It is commonly assumed that left-wing parties favour public spending increases while right-wing parties aim at budget reductions (Tellier, 2006). In this regard, Ferejohn (1999) argues that politicians in favour of a larger public sector should increase transparency to prompt voters to pay higher taxes. Therefore, left-wing governments may be expected to adopt higher levels of transparency than right-

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wing ones. Accordingly, the political ideology may influence e-disclosure practices through website or social media by municipality. Thus, we propose: H10. : There is a relationship between political ideology and social media use by local governments.

3. Research context: Italy and Spain The European Committee of Ministers Recommendation 19/2001 establishes the basic principles of local democratic participation policies. This recommendation has stimulated the development of various national regulations, among them, the Italian and Spanish. In the case of Italy, there is a structured legal system for public communication by both central government and municipalities. Legislative decrees 150/2009 and 33/2013 relate to mandatory public disclosure. In 2009, legislative decree 150 proposes the extended control on municipalities' activities by citizens in order to improve performances. These reforms predict that local government authorities disclose some types of information concerning their activity such as their objectives, performance indicators and data about resources spent on delivering public services and information about organization. Better information disclosure by municipalities facilitates citizens' supervision, better known as social control, and public performance improves. Italian legislation is becoming increasingly transparency oriented. The last reform, concerning public accountability, was legislative decree 33/2013. This act reorganizes the transparency obligations about the dissemination of information via websites by municipalities. Thanks to this act, the easy and free access to municipalities' information is promoted in order to improve participation and collaboration among citizens and municipalities' managers. In other words, the reform encourages social control and open democracy. The decree establishes mandatory disclosure and outlines the information to be published on the website. In Spain, the Spanish Constitution in Article 105 already established that “The law shall make provision for: … b) The access of citizens to administrative files and records, except to the extent that they may concern the security and defence of the State, the investigation of crimes and the privacy of persons…”. Subsequently, the access of citizens to government information has been addressed by various laws. Law 57/2003 on Measures for the Modernization of Local Government underlines the necessary application of information technologies to contribute to public sector transparency. Thus, technologies become a medium for the performance of administrative procedures and the presentation of documents. Likewise, Law 11/2007 on Electronic Access by Citizens to Public Services establishes the legal framework for local authorities to adopt citizens' participation policies and states that technologies are a medium for facilitating citizen participation. Furthermore, Law 37/2007 on The Re-use of Public Sector Information promotes availability of re-usable information by electronic means, guaranteeing that it is made under clear, transparent and non-discriminatory terms. Therefore, Laws 57/ 2003, 11/2007 and 37/2007 contribute to bringing the administration closer to citizens by use of technologies. The Spanish public administration currently appears to have made transparency in public management a priority. In fact, the culmination of regulations on transparency came in 2013 with the approval of Law 19/2013 on Transparency, Access to Public Information and Good Governance. This law envisages the fulfillment of the transparency principle through the creation of active publicity obligations for all administrations. Furthermore, it states that information must be published on their websites in a clear, structured, understandable and reusable way. The Law has led to the publication of different transparency portals by public administrations, such as the State General Administration transparency portal created in December 2014.

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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Even though the use of social media to disclose information is not mandatory in Italy or Spain, voluntary e-disclosure through social media by municipalities is rising considerably. Therefore, we consider that local governments in Italy and Spain provide an ideal institutional setting to test our hypotheses. 4. Methodology 4.1. Sample The sample comprises 217 Italian and Spanish municipalities which used Facebook to disclose information in 2014. The initial number of municipalities was 240 (120 municipalities from each country), but the lack of data for some variables led to a reduction in the sample size. The selection criterion that we followed was the size of the municipalities, that is, we took the 120 largest municipalities which used Facebook in the aforementioned year for each country. Thus, the sample covers practically all Spanish municipalities of over 50,000 inhabitants. As for Italy, the size of these municipalities is much smaller. We should note that this sample offers some advantages: (a) local governments are an important subject for the study of social media because of traditions of citizen participation at local level (Mossberger et al., 2013); (b) local governments in Italy and Spain provide an ideal institutional setting to test our hypotheses (see the Research context section); and (c) Facebook is the social media that dominates the web landscape and is used more and more by local governments. 4.2. Variables The aim of our empirical analysis is to assess the determinants of the level of information disclosure through municipal social media. For this purpose, first we built a synthetic indicator to measure Facebook usage by local governments (Facebook Index). Second, we use this index as a dependent variable of our empirical model. Our Facebook index shows the effort by the municipality to inform citizens through Facebook. It is composed of two items and data are collected from municipalities' official Facebook pages from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014.The items chosen are: (i) the number of posts published by municipalities on their official Facebook pages during the year; and (ii) the number of posts shared by municipalities on their official Facebook pages during the year. We built the Facebook index by adding the scores obtained in these two items ((i) and (ii)). We calculated the Cronbach alpha to measure the reliability of this index. The value of the Cronbach's alpha for Facebook index is 0.78, which is evidence of its high level of internal consistency. This index (Facebook index) is the dependent variable of our model. In accordance with the literature discussed in Section 2.3, the determinants of information disclosure through municipal social media can be grouped into three categories: (1) socio-economic determinants; (2) financial determinants; and (3) political determinants. Our independent variables have been classified accordingly (see Table 1). The socio-economic features considered are citizens' participation via Facebook (E-participation index), the population size (Population), the municipal multiculturalism (Multiculturalism), the citizens' level of income (Income), the Internet penetration in the municipality (Internet) and the level of citizens' education (Education). The financial situation category includes the financial autonomy and the level of indebtedness of the local government (Autonomy and Leverage, respectively). Finally, we consider the gender of the mayor (Gender) and the political ideology (Ideology) as political determinants. Furthermore, we control for the type of municipality by including the Type variable (1: Province; 0: Municipality). This accounts for the differences in political structure and complexity between municipalities that only act as municipalities and those that are also provincial capitals. According to the previous literature, the provincial capitals will tend to be more inclined toward e-disclosure and, in turn, to social media use,

since they have more financial, technical and human resources to implement the website and the social media as tools of communication between citizens and governments (Norris & Demeter, 1999; Moon & Norris, 2005; Bertot et al., 2010; Gallego-Álvarez et al., 2010; Gesuele & Alvino, 2014). In the same way, we introduce a dummy variable (Country) in our model that takes into account the country to which the municipality belongs (1: Italy; 0: Spain), since the use of social media may differ by country (Magro, 2012). In order to measure the level of citizens' participation via Facebook, we have created the E-participation index for each municipality. The Eparticipation index is composed of four items: (I) number of “likes” on the municipality official Facebook page; (II) number of posts with at least one like on the municipality official Facebook page; (III) number of comments made by citizens on the municipality official Facebook page; and (IV) number of posts on the municipality official Facebook page shared by citizens. These data have been collected from municipalities' official Facebook pages during 2014.In particular, items (II), (III) and (IV) refer to the period: January 1, 2014 - December 31, 2014. However, item (I) counts all the “likes” on the municipality official Facebook page from its creation to December 31, 2014, when the data was extracted.1 As in the case of Facebook index, we have added together the scores obtained in these four items to build the E-participation index. Therefore, this index captures the number of times that citizens interact and share information through the municipality official Facebook page. The value of Cronbach's alpha for E-participation index is 0.74, suggesting a high level of reliability. Table 1 describes the variables and basic statistics. Table 2 shows a preliminary assessment of the relationship between the key variables. 4.3. Model In order to analyse the explanatory factors of information disclosure through municipal social media, we first propose the following model: Facebookindexi ¼ α þ β1 E−participation index1i þ β2 Population2i þ β3 Multiculturalism3i þ β4 Income4i þ β5 Internet 5i þ β6 Education6i þ β7 Autonomy7i þ β8 Leverage8i þ β9 Gender 9i þ β10 Ideology10i þ β11 Type11i þ β12 Country12i þ εi

ð1Þ

where subscript i (i = 1…217) represents each municipality, α is the constant of the equation, βj are the parameters to be estimated and εi is the error term. In the presence of multicollinearity the estimators are imprecisely estimated. At the outset, we consider Country as independent variable. Nevertheless, as Table 2 shows, this variable presents a high correlation with the variables Population, Income and Leverage. We check whether problems of multicollinearity exist by calculating the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) which measures the degree of collinearity between the independent variables in a regression. VIF-values greater than 5 may indicate multicollinearity (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006). When the variable Country remains in our initial model, its VIF is 12.54. Thus, we remove it from our initial model in order to avoid multicollinearity problems. One it is dropped, the maximum VIF is 2.86 (see Table 3).2 1 This is not methodologically wrong because the information about the number of “likes” is not a counter since the number of fans of a Facebook page (number of “likes”) can be added and removed from the page and tends to stabilize after a certain period of time. Moreover, the fans that follow the municipal Facebook page during a period of time, for example, 2014, are the people who indeed receive information from this municipality during this year via Facebook. Previous literature (see, e.g., Lev-On & Steinfeld, 2015) has also considered “the number of likes on the municipality official Facebook page”. 2 We consider the variables Population, Income and Leverage and not the variable Country in our final model, since these variables are those which really explain the differences between countries instead of the dummy variable.

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

M.-D. Guillamón et al. / Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Table 1 Definition of variables and descriptive statistics. Variable (1) Facebook indexa

(2) E-participation indexa

Populationa

Description

Measurement

Source

Effort of the municipality to inform citizens thorough the use of Facebook Level of citizens' participation via Facebook

Logarithm of the sum of (i) number of posts published by municipalities; and (ii) number of posts shared by municipalities

S., I.: Own elaboration from the municipalities' official Facebook page

Logarithm of the sum of (I) number of likes; (II) number of posts with at least one like; (III) number of comments done by citizens; and (IV) number of posts shared by citizens Number of inhabitants in logarithm

8.1114 1.6814 2.5649 13.4093 S., I.: Own elaboration from the municipalities' official Facebook page 10.4922 1.7372 5.1818 14.9677 S.: Taken from Spanish National Statistics Institute I.: Taken from Italian National Statistics Institute S.: Taken from Spanish 9.6024 6.8992 1.0000 40.2992 National Statistics Institute I.: Taken from Italian National Statistics Institute 18,241.0700 4434.1760 9867.7130 30,415.000 S.: Taken from “Lawrence R. Klein” Economic Institute I.: Taken from Comuniverso (www.comuniverso.it) 0.2288 0.0611 0.0229 0.7721 Own elaboration from: S.: Spanish National Statistics Institute I.: Italian National Statistics Institute 12.1660 6.5643 3.2746 48.8400 S.: Taken from Spanish National Statistics Institute I.: Taken from Italian National Statistics Institute 59.3292 16.7374 0.2413 99.3985 S.: Taken from Spanish Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations I.: Taken from Comuniverso (www.comuniverso.it) 409.8419 593.6693 12.3854 2974.1390 S.: Taken from Spanish Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations I.: Taken from Comuniverso (www.comuniverso.it) S., I.: Own elaboration 0.1477 0.3555 0.0000 1.0000 from municipal webs 0.6245 0.4853 0.0000 1.0000 S.: Own elaboration from Ministry of Internal Affairs I.: Taken from municipalities webpage S., I.: Own elaboration 0.2532 0.4357 0.0000 1.0000

Population size

Multiculturalism Presence of foreign citizens within municipality

% Foreign population of total population

Income

Citizens' income level

Income per capita

Internet

Internet penetration

Number of broadband lines per capita

Education

Citizens' education

% of population who has education level greater that high school

Financial Autonomy of the municipality

% tax revenues/total revenue

Debt level of the municipality

Debt per capita

Gender of Mayor

Female: 1 Male: 0 Right: 1 Left: 0

(3) Autonomy

Leverage

(4) Gender Ideology

(5) Type Country

Political ideology

Type of municipality Province:1 Municipality: 0 Italy: 1 Country to which Spain: 0 the municipality belongs

S., I.: Own elaboration

Mean 5.4740

0.5021

Std. dev. 1.5674

0.5011

Min. 0.0000

0.0000

Max. 7.5590

1.0000

Notes: (1) Dependent variable; (2) Socio-economic determinants; (3) Financial determinants; (4) Political determinants; and (5) Control variables. S.: Spain; I.: Italy. a Logarithms have been taken to avoid heterogeneity problems in the sample given the differences in the size of municipalities of both countries.

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

Country

1.0000 1.0000 ***−0.1771

M.-D. Guillamón et al. / Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Type

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Table 3 Estimation of regression and tests. Dependent variable

Facebook index

Intercept

−0.2479 (−0.29) *** 0.5798 (8.90) ** 0.1797 (2.36) 0.0019 (0.15) ** −0.0000 (−2.20) 0.8162 (0.56) 0.0285 (1.60) −0.0060 (−1.18) ** −0.0004 (−2.18) −0.1532 (−0.68) −0.1101 (−0.67) −0.1533 (−0.64) 0.51 89.81 (p = 0.10) 217

E-participation index

1.0000 0.1018 0.0038 ***−0.2039 1.0000 0.1068 *0.1249 0.0724 ***−0.6662

1.0000 *0.1108 **−0.1623

Gender Leverage

Ideology

Population Multiculturalism Income Internet Education Autonomy Leverage Gender

1.0000 **−0.1403 0.0181 −0.0129 −0.0329 0.0653 1.0000 0.0210 ***0.2026 *0.1175 ***0.2156 ***0.4787 ***−0.4632 1.0000 ***0.2940 −0.0234 ***0.3609 0.0501 0.0741 ***0.2067 ***−0.5533

Type Adj. R-Squared White's test (chi2) N

2.86 1.32 1.66 1.35 1.81 1.12 1.84 1.07 1.08 1.81

Then, our final model is the following: Facebookindexi ¼ α þ β1 E−participation index1i þ β2 Population2i þ β3 Multiculturalism3i þ β4 Income4i þ β5 Internet 5i þ β6 Education6i þ β7 Autonomy7i þ β8 Leverage8i þ β9 Gender 9i þ β10 Ideology10i þ β11 Type11i þ εi

ð2Þ

where subscript i (i = 1…217) represents each municipality, α is the constant of the equation, βj are the parameters to be estimated and εi is the error term. We estimate this final model by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). Under the assumptions of the classical linear regression model, the coefficients estimated by OLS are considered linear, unbiased, efficient and consistent. However, if the model presents problems of heteroskedasticity, the coefficients remain linear, unbiased and consistent but not efficient (minimum variance) (Wooldridge, 2003). Heteroskedasticity occurs when the variance of the error terms differs across observations. In this sense, we apply White's test to analyse the presence of heteroskedasticity in our model. The null hypothesis of this test is “there is no heteroskedasticity”. 5. Results and discussion

Significance: ***1%, **5%, *10%.

1.0000 ***0.3053 ***−0.2057 ***0.4530 ***0.5058 −0.0054 ***0.4561 **0.1284 ***0.2009 ***0.5198 ***−0.6577 1.0000 ***0.5788 ***0.2379 −0.0900 ***0.1807 ***0.2094 0.0373 ***0.1998 −0.0237 **0.1535 ***0.3683 ***−0.2898 1.0000 ***0.6596 ***0.5355 **0.1611 **−0.1492 ***0.2305 ***0.3052 −0.0687 **0.1597 −0.0069 *0.1182 ***0.2876 ***−0.3677 Facebook index E-participation index Population Multiculturalism Income Internet Education Autonomy Leverage Gender Ideology Type Country

1.62

T-values (OLS). Significance: ***1%, **5%, *10%.

1.0000 ***−0.1786 ***0.2607 0.0255 ***0.1917 ***0.3301 −0.0131 *0.1180 0.0230 ***−0.3355

1.0000 ***−0.2094 ***0.1779 **0.1397 ***−0.5161 **−0.1584 −0.0598 **0.1574 ***0.6785

Autonomy Internet Population E-participation index Facebook index

Table 2 Correlations between variables.

Multiculturalism

Income

Education

Ideology

VIF

Table 3 presents the results of the OLS regression. As stated above, we calculate the VIF and White's test to check the presence of multicollinearity and heteroskedasticity, respectively. None of the VIF values in the regression analysis exceeded 2.86, indicating that there is no evidence of multicollinearity. White's test shows the non-presence of heteroskedasticity. Therefore, the OLS coefficients are efficient. As we can see from Table 3, our results support hypothesis 1, since Eparticipation index positively impacts on the level of Facebook use by municipalities (Facebook index). Our findings show that e-participation does indeed provide incentives for governments to publish more information through their official Facebook page. E-participation requires a response from governments and therefore they are encouraged to

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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publish more information through social media (e.g. Facebook). This is in line with Halvorsen (2003); Welch et al. (2005); Tolbert and Mossberger (2006); Kim (2007) and Halavais's (2009) arguments. However, we would like to point out that some previous studies suggest the possible existence of endogeneity between citizen participation and information disclosure. Fölscher, Krafchik, and Shapiro (2000) state that transparency and participation can be mutually reinforcing, i.e., transparency may be a prerequisite for citizen participation which, in turn, can lead to more requests for information. Therefore, there may be reverse causality, so that the level of information disclosure may also affect the level of citizens' participation. According to Arnstein (1969), information is essential in genuine public participation. Therefore, participation is meaningless if citizens are not well informed. This means that there can be no authentic citizen participation without effective information disclosure (Justice & DüIger, 2009). Given the above, we re-estimate our final model (Eq. (2)) by twostage least squares (2SLS) as a way to solve the possible endogeneity problem between E-participation index and Facebook index. 2SLS ensures that estimators are consistent when endogeneity exists in the model. However, after applying the Durbin–Wu–Hausman endogeneity test (F (1, 204) = 0.0399; p = 0.8419), we prove that there is no reverse causality between E-participation index and Facebook index. Thus, OLS is an appropriate estimation of our model. Anyway, both estimations (OLS and 2SLS) present very similar results, which confirm the robustness of our model. With respect to the size of the municipality (Population), the data prove Hypothesis 2: the higher the size of population, the higher use of Facebook by local governments (Facebook index). Since larger municipalities present greater information asymmetry problems, they may use more social media applications to favour the immediate communication between politicians and citizens and reduce agency costs. This finding fits with Styles and Tennyson (2007); Serrano-Cinca et al. (2009); Gallego-Álvarez et al. (2010); Cárcaba and García-García (2010); Pina et al. (2010); Guillamón et al. (2011); Bonsón et al. (2012) and Gibby et al. (2014), who demonstrate a positive relationship between population size and web applications (website or social media) dissemination by municipalities. The coefficient of variable Multiculturalism is not significant (Hypothesis 3), which indicates that the higher/lower presence of foreign people within a municipality does not affect the local government's information disclosure via Facebook. Therefore, municipalities with high multiculturalism are not using e-disclosure diffusion for reducing social exclusion and/or for encouraging foreign citizens' engagement. Regarding citizens' income level (Income), contrary to the mainstream literature, we find that the lower the level of citizens' income, the higher the social media use by local governments, so our findings do not support our Hypothesis 4. Previous literature shows that people with higher economic status are more likely to have access to new technology and to know how to use it (Tat-Kei Ho, 2002). However, our interpretation is that citizens with lower incomes may also use some new technologies, such as social media (for instance, Facebook), since they are very popular, cheap and easy to use. In this sense, lower income citizens may demand more information disclosure through these media and, in turn, local governments may be using these tools to reach these citizens. Our results do not confirm Hypotheses 5 and 6, since the coefficients of the variables Internet and Education are not significant. Thus, we do not find a significant effect of either Internet penetration and the level of education on e-disclosure via Facebook. This finding agrees with the results of Kim (2007); Pina et al. (2010) and Rodríguez-Domínguez et al. (2011). As for the financial condition of the municipality (Hypotheses 7 and 8), only the level of indebtedness (Leverage) appears to affect Facebook use by local governments. Our estimates reveal that when local governments have a high level of debt, their use of Facebook to disclose information is lower. Therefore, our results do not agree with previous

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literature, which supports that higher public debt is associated with higher disclosure (Zimmerman, 1977; Debreceny et al., 2002). One possible explanation of this finding is that governments with higher levels of debt may be less transparent; and therefore, they might also have less incentive to disclose information via Facebook. Thus, municipalities may try to hide inefficiencies in their management from citizens and creditors. With regard to political determinants, the coefficients of the variables Gender and Ideology are negative but not significant which prevents our supporting Hypotheses 9 and 10. Thus, our results indicate that the use of Facebook to disclose municipal information does not depend on the gender of the mayor. In the same way, we find that both left and right-wings governments disclose a similar amount of information. Finally, the level of e-disclosure via Facebook is not related to the type of municipality (Type). 6. Conclusions Social media offer governments a new approach to improve transparency and accountability, involving increasingly citizens to participate and collaborate in decision making to improve information management and access as public service. This study contributes to understand better the social media tools usage to increase the level of local governments' transparency. For this purpose, first, we build a synthetic indicator to measure Facebook use by municipalities. Second, we propose a research model to analyse the determinants of varying levels of Facebook use, using the aforementioned index as dependent variable of our model. A high level of use Facebook implies that local governments tend to increase the level of transparency and openness making information and data about processes publicly and readily accessible for citizens. We use a sample of 217 Italian and Spanish municipalities in 2014. We extend prior research on local government transparency, focusing on factors that determine the municipality's propensity to the information disclosure via social media. Understanding the municipalities' characteristics (e.g., socio-economic, financial, and political factors) that mostly use these tools can promote the definition of “appropriate behaviors, types of interactions, and new modes of communication that subsequently are formalized in social media strategies and policies” (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013, p. 390). For example, if social media tools offer citizens the opportunity for communicating their own opinions on the information provided by local governments, at the same time, local governments should contribute to online discussions with the public avoiding to behave as passive onlookers “out of the network” (Bonsón et al., 2012; Mergel, 2013). Moreover, governments should gather and use the feedback of public to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their processes (Mergel, 2013) in order to fully realize an open information paradigm to support the radical transparency (Mergel, 2012). Overall, four main conclusions come out from our analysis. The first is that e-participation provides incentives for governments to be more transparent. Given that social media foster interaction between citizens and governments, citizens' participation will be higher and they will require a response from governments and therefore the latter may be encourage to publish more information through Facebook. The second is that when the size of population is higher, local governments use more social media applications to disclose information and reduce agency costs, i.e., they are more transparent. The third is that Facebook use by municipalities also depends on the level of citizens' income. In fact, we find a negative relationship between citizens' income and the use of Facebook by local governments. This unforeseen result is in line with the main trend in social media use that emphasizes the growth among some groups that were not among the earliest adopters, such as those living in the lowest-income households (Pew Research Center, 2015). Unlike other web applications (e.g., municipal websites), Facebook is a popular, cheap and user-friendly mass media, so lower

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005

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income citizens may demand more information disclosure through this media and, in turn, local governments may be using these tools to reach these citizens. In this sense, social media are considered as an effective means to improve transparency within municipalities. Finally, governments with higher levels of debt have less incentive to disclose information via Facebook since they try to hide the inefficiencies in their management from citizens and creditors. Some predictors potentially related to transparency do not fit significantly to our model. For example, although previous literature identified political determinants as related to attitudes toward transparency (e.g., Piotrowski & Van Ryzin, 2007; Bonsón et al., 2012; Taipale, 2013), this study has shown contrasting findings. We believe that these opposite results seem to derive from the specific nature of the technology investigated, i.e., social media, that differentiates from website as subject mainly investigated in the empirical literature on edisclosure. Our study has important practical implications. Given that the use of social media by municipalities is rising considerably, they should pay particular attention to their relationship with citizens through social media. In fact, we think that just as the legal system mandatorily requires e-disclosure through municipalities' websites, legislation should regulate the use of social media by governments. We consider that the use of social media is profitable for participants since they increase the immediate interaction between citizens and governments. As for citizens, social media favour their abandoning their passive role and interacting with government, as they have the opportunity of publishing their own points of view on the information provided by local governments. As for governments, social media make the immediate distribution of contents and the feedback from citizens easy. The municipality's Facebook page maybe considered a symbol of modernity and responsiveness, perceived as a must for political legitimacy (Ma, 2013). To sum up, local governments tend to foster transparency and accountability through use of social media, by enhancing citizens to oversee into the workings of governments and voice their concerns about these workings. Nevertheless, we think that social media applications should be managed by qualified people to prevent the misuse of these tools, so there is a need to identify new organizational roles in the municipality, such as social media manager. Moreover, our study could help the local politicians to understand the people interested in information disclosure via social media and, thus, adapt the communication strategies in terms of style, language, and content for several target groups. Politicians should focus on content management on Facebook page and on information provision that properly addresses different users' needs. For example, our findings showed that the lower the level of citizens' income the higher the social media use by local governments. Since low-income people are interested in social services, benefits, or financial support, municipalities could publish more information related to these issues. In the same way, municipalities should use appropriate measures to encourage interest groups to use social media for interaction with the government. These findings are only a first step toward an understanding of the use of social media by local governments. From our point of view, our study has some limitations related to the process by which our Facebook index and E-participation index were built. Regarding Facebook index, it considers the number of posts published by the municipality on Facebook as a proxy of infomation disclosure, that is, more posts mean more information disclosed, but this is not necessarily the case (e.g. municipalities may publish the same postseveral times). Moreover, this index takes into account the amount of information disclosed but not the quality of this information. As for E-participation index, one of the items included in this indicator (item (I)) counts the number of “likes” on the municipality official Facebook page from its creation to December 31, 2014, but not only for 2014, as in the case of the rest of items ((II), (III) and (IV)). Moreover, another limitation is that this study does not take social media content into consideration, that is, it does

not show what are the main topics discussed through municipalities' Facebook pages. Given the above, future research should work along these lines by building new measures of information disclosure and participation via social media and extending this analysis to other social media (e.g. Twitter) and countries (e.g. countries without transparency laws) to confirm the relationships found in this study. Furthermore, we think that not only it would be interesting to analyse the determinants of varying levels of social media use, but also the factors that make municipalities adopt or not social media to disseminate information. Moreover, efforts should be undertaken to investigate the use of social media with electoral purposes (e.g., whether local governments publish more information when elections are closer) or other purposes (e.g., whether local governments publish information to remove social, cultural and racial barriers in municipalities with high multiculturalism).Finally, we think that it would be interesting to evaluate the content communicated by the municipality through social media and the long-term evolution of social media use by local governments.

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María-Dolores Guillamón, Ph.D., is a Lecturer of Public Sector Accounting at the University of Murcia, Spain. Her research focuses on financial management, transparency and debt in the public sector. She is a member of the European Accounting Association and the Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research Network. She has published papers in journals such as Local Government Studies, International Review of Administrative Sciences and Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. Ana-María Ríos, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University Centre of Defence at the Spanish Air Force Academy. Her research focuses on budget transparency, legislative budgetary oversight, public participation in the budget process and governmental financial management in a national/international comparative approach. She is a member of the European Accounting Association and the Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research Network. She has published papers in journals such as Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, American Review of Public Administration and Public Choice. Benedetta Gesuele, Ph.D., is Research Fellow at the University of Naples “Parthenope”. She has been Visiting Researcher at Valencia University, Valencia, Spain. Her research interests focus on e-government, e-disclosure and information systems in public sector. She has participated as speaker in several international conferences as annual conferences of Italian Chapter of AIS (itAIS); conferences of European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). Concetta Metallo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Organization and Information Systems at “Parthenope” University (Naples, Italy). Her research interests are: adoption of technology in organizations and usage behavior, geographically dispersed team, learning processes and new technologies. She has participated as speaker in several international conferences, including Academy of Management (AOM), European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and annual conferences of European Group for Public Administration (EGPA). She has published papers in journals such as Journal of Computer Information Systems, International Journal of Technology Management, Behaviour & Information Technology and Information Systems Management.

Please cite this article as: Guillamón, M.-D., et al., Factors influencing social media use in local governments: The case of Italy and Spain, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.06.005