Factors influencing the adoption of e‐government websites in Afghanistan from the citizens' perspective

Abstract

AbstractThe report by the United Nations in 2020 stated that Afghanistan was ranked 118th position in the e‐participation index which shows the low level of adoption among the Afghan citizens to online services offered by the e‐government websites in Afghanistan. As no previous research has been conducted to explore the influential factors on the adoption of e‐government websites in Afghanistan, this research fills the research gap by exploring the impact of website quality factors, trust factors, and technology adoption factors on intention to use e‐government websites from the citizens' perspective in Afghanistan. This research also investigates the impact of factors on the adoption of governmental websites at three levels (information, interaction, and transaction) of e‐government maturity. As part of the current research, the unified model of e‐government adoption (UMEGA) model was extended by integrating website quality factors and trust factors, which were extracted based on an extensive literature review. To validate the model, a survey of 294 Afghan citizens was conducted in four provinces of Afghanistan. The data were then analyzed using the partial least square‐structured equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) technique. The result revealed that websites quality, technology adoption, and trust factors have major impacts on the adoption of e‐government websites in Afghanistan, the impact of which varies depending on the level of e‐government maturity. Public administrators, officials, policymakers, website designers, and researchers have potential implications from the findings of this research regarding the adoption of governmental websites in Afghanistan.