Abstract
Undoubtedly, the internet has become the most convenient and efficient communication and service delivery channel adopted by most government agencies, referred to as eGovernment. This study explores how eGovernment efficiency influences users’ subjective wellbeing (SWB), using trust as a covert stimulus with the capacity to alter individuals’ overt behavior (utilization). Covert and overt stimuli act as significant factors influencing the relationship between citizens and the online environment, moderated by socio-demographic characteristics. Using situation–organism–behavior–consequence theory, we propose a research model consisting of online environment eGovernment efficiency (the situation) influencing trust development (the organism), which in turn influences utilization (the behavior), generating an impact on an individuals’ SWB (the consequence). We followed the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to analyze the data survey N = 300, using Amos statistical techniques. Results reveal that the correlation between eGovernment efficiency and trust is positive and strong, trust and utilization is positive and moderate, and the correlation between utilization and SWB is positive and very strong. Stepwise regression analysis reveals that the control variables affect the relationship between eGovernment efficiency and trust. In the regression model: the highest education level explained 36% of the variance (model 1); adding age increased the variance explained to 39% (in model 2), and adding internet use frequency increased the variance explained to 41% (model 3). This study develops theoretical concepts of eGovernment use and how it affects citizens by indicating the psychological and behavioral situations as antecedents and mediators influencing SWB. It also provides practical suggestions for improving systems to correlate users’ feelings and behavior patterns to motivate trusting behavior, positively impacting users’ SWB to benefit citizens effectively.
Highlights
The internet plays a crucial role in our lives
Employing the situation–organism–behavior–consequence (SOBC) model (Davis and Luthans, 1980), this study extends existing knowledge by explaining how the external environment “eGovernment efficiency” affects the internal state of individuals’ “trust”, which in turn influences “utilization”, triggering an impact on their “subjective wellbeing” (SWB)
Since there internet access difference, mainly due to occupation, purposive and cluster sampling was implemented to group citizens into four sampling units to logically represent the population in an attempt to mitigate common method bias (CMB) (Jordan and Troth, 2020)
Summary
Whether used for work, business, education, communication, information, or relaxation, the internet is associated with technological innovation. This vast and complex environment motivated interest among many practitioners and researchers. EGovernment is considered a powerful, effective, efficient, and transparent tool that links government and non-government agencies and replaces offices’ time-consuming and expensive traditional infrastructure (Thompson et al, 2020). In a nutshell, it saves time, costs, and resources, improving governments’ efficiency (Joshi and Islam, 2018; Scholta et al, 2019). Traditional service objectives set out in the initial framework may not entirely be applicable in a web-enabled environment (Kaisara and Pather, 2011), which is the root cause of utilization problems (Li and Shang, 2020)
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