To Adopt or Not To Adopt: A Literature Review on Barriers to Citizens' Adoption of E-Government Services

Distel Bettina, Ogonek Nadine

Zusammenfassung

The use of technologies has changed daily life considerably. Nearly all life areas are affected by the widespread availability and ever growing use of the Internet. In the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in how to best implement the benefits of new technologies within public administrations – not only to reform the work of administrations, but also to provide their stakeholders with public services in a way that fits their demands. But compared to other electronic services like ecommerce public administrations are still confronted with low adoption rates, notably on the part of citizens. We conducted a literature review to identify possible barriers to citizens’ adoption of electronic government services and gathered data from 197 journals that published articles on the nonadoption or rejection of electronic government services. Although the results are quite heterogeneous, our findings reveal six superordinate categories of barriers: technological, socioeconomic, communication, cultural, individual and service-related barriers. Moreover, this review reveals considerable gaps in the research on electronic government rejection. Finally, we can show that there is no common ground on barriers to adoption. Thus, we provide an agenda that encourages further research concerning the interaction between citizens and public administrations via electronic channels. 

Schlüsselwörter
e-government; technology adoption; literature review