Citizen Intention to Adopt e-Government Services in
Saudi Arabia
Sulaiman A. Alateyah
1
, Victor Chang
2
, Richard M. Crowder
1
and Gary B. Wills
1
1
Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.
2
Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, U.K.
Abstract. Although e-Government has been adopted in developed countries, it
has not been widely adopted in developing countries particularly in the Arab
world. This explains our motivation in identifying factors that can improve the
adoption of e-Government in Saudi Arabia. While there are challenges ahead
for e-Government adoption, we have identified ten factors that can influence
successful delivery. These factors were defined and categorized and followed
by an exploratory study to examine the importance of these factors. In order to
validate our hypothesis, we used questionnaires to collect the views of three
groups of Saudi citizens, and use the triangulation method to validate our
results. Our statistical results show that we have very low t-test value in our one
sample t-test which supports our hypothesis by identifying ten important factors
for Saudi citizen adoption of e-Government services. We conclude that these
ten factors can determine the successful adoption of e-Government in Saudi
Arabia and meet the strategic plan set by the Saudi government in accessing
what is required to increase adoption.
1 Introduction
The e-Government initiatives are recommended by the United Nations, which has a
conceptual framework for E-government programmes United Nations [1]. Under their
guidelines, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is at their
centre of strategies to enable government services to be successfully delivered to the
citizens of the participating UN states. The e-Government initiates have been widely
adopted, whereby the use of ICT can improve the digital connectivity and interactions
between different citizens and organisations [2]. In these cases, the advancement in
technology can enhance the efficiencies and collaboration between departments in the
governments and ensure that services can be delivered to meet the requirements of all
the stakeholders and citizens involved. This also ensures that the administrative pro-
cesses and services of government can be offered by the electronic systems. Blending
administrative processes and government services, the increment of the capacity and
readiness of the public sector are essential in the areas of a country’s technological
and telecommunications infrastructure and the level of its human resources develop-
ment [3].
A. Alateyah S., Chang V., Crowder R. and B. Wills G..
Citizen Intention to Adopt e-Government Services in Saudi Arabia.
DOI: 10.5220/0004980400380045
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Emerging Software as a Service and Analytics (ESaaSA-2014), pages 38-45
ISBN: 978-989-758-026-0
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 Literature Review
2.1 Citizen Adoption
Yonazi et al., [4] state that developing countries can benefit from it enormously from
the introduction of e-government. Based on the literature in [5], an existing challenge
is how to enhance the e-government adoption and the use of their online government
services. However, literature in [4] and [5] do not address e-Government adoption
and the factors for successful adoption in developing countries, particularly in the
Arab world [6, 7]. We undertook a comprehensive literature review as follows.
Firstly, Dong, et al. [8] explain why e-Government adoption is often not support-
ed by the e-Government researchers, because citizens do not use online services [5].
Secondly, Carter and Belanger [9] assert that no study has identified the core factors
that influence citizen adoption of e-Government initiatives, even though there are
attempts to analyse user adoption of electronic commerce [10]. Thirdly, studies un-
dertaken by Colesca [11] suggest that many studies regarding the citizen adoption of
e-Government services focus on trust [12], security [13] and transparency [14] that
influence e-Government adoption. Finally, research by Margetts [15], cited by
Yonazi, et al. [4], indicate that improving the opportunity that e-Government might
deliver benefits including social and economic to their public is based on high adop-
tion of these initiatives.
2.2 Models Used to Measure Adoption of New Technologies
To make a fair justification for e-Government adoption, common models that used by
researchers’ and different contributions have been reviewed, including the
Technology Adoption Model (TAM) by Davis [16], Diffusion of Innovations Model
(DOI) by Rogers [17] and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
(UTAUT) by [18]. Other researchers have developed their models based on the
extended development of Davis [16] to propose factors that would encourage citizen
to adopt e-Government. These models have a combination of factors which have been
adopted from TAM, DOI and UTAUT include Trustworthiness by [19], model for
citizen adoption by [20] and Rehman and Esichaikul [21] model of citizen adoption.
3 Discussion
Obtaining the views of prospective e-government users and experts in the field are
important for the development of this research. Topics for considerations are as
follows. Firstly, identify the challenges that would face the implementation and
development of e-Government in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the possible factors that
would affect the citizens’ intention to adopt E-government services. While addressing
these two topics, key questions need to be asked and they are: (i) What are the
challenges or barriers to implement and develop e-Government in Saudi Arabia?; (ii)
What are the influential factors to be integrated in a model for implementing and
39
developing E-government in order to be adopted by the citizen? Supporting
descriptions are described as follows.
3.1 Factors Influencing Citizens’ Intention to Adopt e-Government Services in
Saudi Arabia
There are related issues to be taken into consideration while addressing issues in this
research question. The most important question is: “How can the Saudi government
overcome challenges to help its citizens adopt e-Government?”. In order to facilitate
this, important factors are identified along with the development of answering
questions in the survey. This key question to help people adopt e-Government
services. All factors are presented in Table I which was based on literature reviews in
10 categories. Our next goal was to validate our hypothesis with these ten factors, so
that we can demonstrate that our approach can meet the needs of Saudi citizens.
3.2 Methods to Validate This Research
Triangulation method is used to increase precision in empirical research [22] which is
fully supportive to our proposal. Due to this reason, our validation technique is based
on the Triangulation method. Another valid point to note regarding this approach is
that according to Runeson and Höst [22], the triangulation method can offer a more
comprehensive answer to address our research question. In this research, the pro-
posed factors are validated using the triangulation method based on three key aspects
which are, a detailed literature review has to be undertaken, as well as questionnaires
based on these ten proposed factors need to be distributed among Saudis’ citizens.
Additionally, Saudi government’s employees and experts will be asked to participate
in the study.
4 The Exploratory Study and Its Results
4.1 Questionnaire for Saudi Citizens
Closed-ended questions were provided by us to facilitate the design of the Saudi
citizens’ questionnaire. The supporting reason is that closed-ended questions can find
out how important the defined factors are and also how factors can influence Saudi
citizens to use the e-Government services. Fourteen closed-ended questions were
designed to focus on the identified factors under five categories including culture,
security, privacy, trust and website design. The set of the questions are included in the
appendix. The culture factor has been presented by two questions, one is about the
direct effect on the citizen intention and the other is an indirect effecting on the citi-
zens’ trust. In addition, transaction security also has been presented by two questions.
40
4.2 About the Surveys and Results
This section describes the groups involved, the process by which the survey was
undertaken and how the results associated with our study. Firstly, questionnaires with
fourteen closed-ended questions were designed and distributed online to Saudi
general public. Secondly, questionnaires with twenty three closed-ended questions
were handed in person to the government employees. Thirdly, questionnaires with
twenty nine closed-ended questions were designed for the experts’ interview. Each
expert was interviewed in person. The citizens’ responses have been gathered using
online surveys. Using the collated data, data analysis was undertaken by using SPSS
and running a one-sample t-test against a set value of 3.5 and the citizens’
questionnaires results are presented in Table II. Since the questionnaires have
different questions and applies to different group, each set of data has been analysed
separately. In this paper, only the results of the questionnaires apply to citizens are
shown in table II. The data analysis and its results for the Saudi government’s
employees and experts are presented in previous work [23, 24].
Table 1. Factors influencing citizens to adopt e-Government services.
No Factors Appliedto
1
Technical Infrastructure
Government employees and experts
2
Computer and Information Literacy
Age.
Gender.
Education.
3
Lack of Awareness
4
Security
Transaction Security.
Information Security.
Perceived Risk.
Citizen
5
Privacy
6
Trust
Trust in Government.
Trust In Internet.
7
Quality of Service
Service Quality.
Reliability.
Availability.
Speed of Delivery.
Information Quality.
Government employees and experts
8
Culture Citizen
9
Diffusion Of Innovation
Compatibility.
Complexity.
Image.
Relative Advantage.
Government employees and experts
10
Website Design
Perceived Usefulness.
Perceived Ease of Use.
Multi-lingual Website
Usability.
Accessibility.
Citizen
Government employees and experts
41
Table 2. The result of the one sample t-test of the questionnaires apply to Saudi citizens.
Factors p-value Result
Security
.005 statistically significant
Transaction Security
<.001 statistically significant
.010 statistically significant
Information Security
<.001 statistically significant
Risk
<.001 statistically significant
Privacy
.034 statistically significant
Trust
<.001 statistically significant
Trust in Internet
<.001 statistically significant
Trust in Government
<.001 statistically significant
Culture
<.001 statistically significant
Indirect effect of Culture’s on trust
0.222 statistically significant
Usefulness
<.001 statistically significant
Ease of Use
<.001 statistically significant
4.3 The Reliability of the Results
We use a reliable approach to minimize errors in measurement. In order to achieve
that, we select a high confidence interval in our data analysis [25]. Reliability in this
context, refers to the extent to which data analysis procedures will produce consistent
results [26]. While investigating this further, the reliability value was argued by
researchers. One research group [25] stated that the reliability value of 0.7 to 0.8 is an
acceptable value for Cronbach’s alpha (α). However, Liu and Arnett [27] explained
that as a “rule of thumb” 0.6 could be accepted. Other approaches such as the use of a
framework to improve the quality and reliability can also be used [28].
After the analysis of survey results, an assessment of the reliability was required
and Cronbach's alpha was used to undertake the test. The result confirms that
Cronbach's alpha had an acceptable outcome, with α being equal to 0.618. This means
that the reliability coefficient for the questionnaire’s result could be seen as adequate.
5 Conclusion
This paper presents an e-Government approach that addresses the needs of Saudi
42
Arabian citizens. We explain the importance of our Saudi e-Government initiative to
meet the requirements of the Saudi government and the general public. We have
undertaken studies to demonstrate that there are ten factors that can improve the e-
Government adoption in Saudi Arabia. These factors have been defined and
categorized followed by an exploratory study to examine the importance of these
factors. In order to validate our hypothesis, we set questionnaires for three groups of
Saudi citizens: general public; government employees and experts. We use the
triangulation method to validate our results. Our statistical results show that we have
very low t-test value in our one sample t-test which supports our hypothesis by
identifying ten important factors for Saudi citizen adoption of e-Government services.
We conclude that these ten factors can determine the e-Government adoption in Saudi
Arabia and meet strategic plan set by the Saudi government in accessing what is
required to increase the popularity in adoption. Results from our proposed approach
can offer benefits to Saudi citizens. There are other challenges such as privacy,
security, trust, culture, computer and information literacy, and IT infrastructure to be
resolved.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the award of a King Abdullah scholarship to Sulaiman Alateyah to
allow this research to be undertaken.
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44
Appendix
The List of the Questions That Applies to the Citizens’ Questionnaires
1. Culture in general does influence citizens to use E-government services.
2. Culture can affect the trust of citizens who intend to use E-government services.
3. Sending information via network medium (e.g. Internet) is safe, which
encourages me to use E-government services.
4. Providing critical information to E-government websites can be risky, which
prevents me from using the E-services.
5. The transaction between E-government services and me is secure and influences
my intention to use the online services.
6. The low level of the transaction security which might cause Losing information,
encouraging me to use the paper-based system.
7. General security about my information, which I am concerned about, affects my
intention to use E-government services.
8. Privacy is a critical issue that citizens are afraid of when they intend to use E-
government services.
9. Trust in general is an important factor that influences citizens to adopt E-
government services.
10. Trust in Internet does not affect the intention of citizens to use E-government
services.
11. Trust in government has an impact on the intention of citizens to use E-
government services.
12. The design of a government’s website increases my intention to use the E-
government Services.
13. Whenever the usefulness of a website is clear and easily perceived by me, I use
the E-government services.
14. A website’s perceived ease of use influences me to use the E-government
services.
45