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Monika Rohe

Lunchtime Seminar

All citizens Are the Same – Aren‘t They? Developing An E-Government User Typology to Better Understand E-Government Non-Adoption
Dienstag, 7. November 2017 - 12:00 bis Freitag, 29. März 2024 - 16:03, Leo 18

Speaker: Bettina Distel

Title: All citizens Are the Same – Aren‘t They? Developing An E-Government User Typology to Better Understand E-Government Non-Adoption

Abstract: The diffusion of electronic government services (e-gov) has been subject to research for years now. Despite the prevailing of electronic services (e-services) of all kinds, administrations are still facing rather low and stagnating adoption rates. Hitherto, there has been little research on technology rejection (i.e. non-adoption) in general and even less research on e-gov rejection. Taking a closer look at current research on e-government diffusion also shows that most studies or conceptual works deal with citizens as one broad mass that is not further described or divided into smaller subgroups. Such efforts are mainly limited to the digital divide discourse and distinguish at most be-tween haves and have-nots or younger and older parts of the population. Understanding why and how citizens use public online services also requires an understanding of how different segments of the population react to in-formation technology (IT) in general as well as to e-government in particular. To date, no meaningful attempts to develop such an e-government user typology have been undertaken. Therefore, the study at hand aims at developing a user typology for the e-government context. To this end, we chose an explorative design and conducted a qualitative interview study in Germany in 2016 with 18 respondents from all age groups. We qualitatively analyzed the sample regarding usage behavior, variety of use, and e-government specific uses and perceptions. Our research reveals six user types differing in quality and quantity of use with regard to internet-based technologies in general and e-government services in particular. Understanding how different populations perceive e-government and contextualizing their behavior can help explaining why some citizens are making advanced use of e-government while others widely ignore these services.

CV: Bettina Distel holds a BA in Romance Studies (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) and an MA in Communication Science (WWU Münster). Currently, she is a research assistant and PhD student at the Chair for Information Systems and Information Management and member of the DFG funded research training group ‘Trust and Communication in a digitized world’ at the WWU. Her research interest lies in e-government diffusion and adoption (mainly by citizens), trust in technologies in general and in e-government in particular.