An empirical investigation of electronic government service quality: from the demand-side stakeholder perspective

Abstract

The emergence of the eGovernment (eGov) virtual medium to provide government services to citizens has opened opportunities for public administration to reform and restructure public service to improve service quality. However, while the restructuring and reforming aspects of eGov service have been explored by researchers, hardly any papers have attempted to investigate the eGov service quality requirements of citizens as customers. Based on a literature review, a proposed theory, and an extensive empirical study of two Canadian cities, we can infer that the service quality of eGov can be conceptualised from four essential formative dimensions of service quality: ease of interaction, fulfilment, trustworthiness, and customer service. In our model, trustworthiness is mediated by security and privacy perceptions. This research provides valuable input towards designing and developing higher-quality service for eGov, inspiring further reformation of public administration. Through our proposed approach, public administration reformation can receive insights from the findings of this paper on the aspects of service quality which citizens need. However, since this research was conducted in only the Canadian eGov context, in order to generalise our findings on service quality perceptions, similar research should be undertaken in other developed and developing countries.

Keywords:

• electronic government
• service quality
• public administration
• citizens
• survey