Citizen Intention to Adopt e-Government Services in

Saudi Arabia

Sulaiman A. Alateyah

, Victor Chang

, Richard M. Crowder

and Gary B. Wills

Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.

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

 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

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.

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 Appliedto

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

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