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Electronic Government, An International Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2011
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
Xenia Papadomichelaki*
and Gregoris Mentzas
Information Management Unit,
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National Technical University of Athens,
9 Iroon Polytechniou str.,
Zografou Campus, 157 80 Zografou, Athens, Greece
Fax: +30-210-772-4042
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]
*Corresponding author
Abstract: Motivated by the growing interest in e-government, our research
aims to discover the quality priorities of e-government users and analyses the
attitude of Greek citizens towards e-government sites in Greece. We propose a
research model which posits four dimensions influential to e-government site
quality – efficiency, trust, reliability, citizen support. Data was collected
and analysed to gather information concerning the way Greek users interact
with e-government. We found that all four dimensions significantly influence
citizens’ evaluation and intention to reuse. E-government users perceived
different importance of quality factors in using different types of e-government
sites.
Keywords: e-government; public service; quality; dimension; quality model;
measurement; instrument; site quality.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Papadomichelaki, X.
and Mentzas, G. (2011) ‘Analysing e-government service quality in Greece’,
Electronic Government, An International Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.290–308.
Biographical notes: Xenia Papadomichelaki is a PhD Candidate and Senior
Researcher at the Information Management Unit/National Technical University
of Athens (NTUA). She is a Mechanical Engineer and has obtained her master
in business administration degree from Canterbury Business School of Kent,
Great Britain. Since then, she has worked in several projects and is currently
working as quality manager in Microwave and Fiber Optics Laboratory
(MFOL) of NTUA and her research interests include quality management and
e-government.
Gregoris Mentzas is Professor of Information Technology Management at the
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical
University of Athens (NTUA) and Director of the Information Management
Unit (IMU), a multidisciplinary research unit at the University. His area of
expertise is information technology management and his research concerns
the integration of knowledge management, semantic web and e-service
technologies.
Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
1
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Introduction and motivation
Quality of service in the public sector has become an issue of great concern. Many
organisations try to self-assess and measure the quality of service delivered. At the same
time, significant progress has been made in the development of e-government services.
While more and more citizens and enterprises use the online services, manifold problems
related to quality of public e-services still exist, according to Top of the Web survey
(eGovernment Unit, 2004a, 2004b). Not being able to find the needed service/
information, difficult use of e-services, the need for better help regarding the e-service
provided on the website, the language understandability etc. are some of frequently
reported usability problems.
By reviewing existing literature, we came across an interesting but limited set of
approaches concerning quality for the ‘e’ channel of public services. Therefore, we
expanded our research in the relative areas of quality of traditional government services,
quality of e-government services and quality of e-services. Although there are various
initiatives that investigate the application of quality management principles to the
delivery of electronic public services, we believe that a quality model which allows the
specification of quality of services’ dimensions and the relations between them will have
significant impact on the improvement of online public services and on the increase of
e-citizens satisfaction.
The broader goal of our research consists of the conceptualisation of an e-government
quality model (e-GovQual) and then the construction, refinement and testing of a
multi-item scale that captures key characteristics of e-government site quality from the
citizen’s perspective and measures the service quality delivered by governmental sites.
Based on the framework of SERVQUAL (Zeithaml et al., 1990) and after two stages
of empirical data collection, we developed a 25-item instrument incorporating four
dimensions of e-government site quality: efficiency, trust, reliability and citizen support.
While improvements are possible, the instrument exhibits excellent psychometric
properties.
Nevertheless the citizens’ preferences and attitudes towards e-government in relation
with their demographic information can help us further comprehend the nature of the
usability problems and the acceptance or restriction towards e-government initiatives.
All of the existing studies are either US or EU based and may not be applicable to other
parts of the world due to the existence of social, cultural and economical differences.
Therefore, in this study, we will try to explore the Greek citizens’ preferences.
The objective of this study was to outline the situation e-government lies in Greece,
to depict the attitudes and the preferences of the Greek citizens-users of e-government
and to examine which behaviours are specific for Greek population and which are more
general. Information was collected concerning demographics together with attitudes and
general behaviour preferences as far as internet and e-government are concerned.
Furthermore, data about different relative importance each quality factor encompasses,
intentions of reuse and overall assessment of the site and the quality constructs to have a
first insight on the behavioural preferences of the citizens of Greece.
This paper is structured in six sections. Section 1 is comprised by a brief introduction
while Section 2 contains the development of the e-GovQual instrument. Data collection
is described in Section 3, followed by a statistical data analysis in Section 4.
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X. Papadomichelaki and G. Mentzas
Section 5 includes findings and related work and finally, Section 6 presents our
conclusions about the present survey together with limitations of the study and our
recommendations for future work.
2
Methodology
2.1 Development of the instrument
2.1.1 Conceptual model
Our goal was to develop a measure that has desirable reliability and validity properties.
Firstly, we defined the universe of content and then we wanted to show that the test
items are a sample of that universe. Content validity is ordinarily to be established
deductively as we sampled systematically within that universe to establish the test
(Cronbach, 1971). By reviewing existing literature, we came across an interesting but
limited set of approaches concerning quality for the ‘e’ channel of public services.
Therefore, we expanded our research in the relative areas of quality of traditional
government services (CAF Resource Center, 2006; Kaplan and Norton, 1992; Motorola
University, 2006a, 2006b; Process Quality Associates Inc., 2001; ISO, 2006; Baldrige
National Quality Program, 2006) quality of e-government services (American Customer
Satisfaction Index, 2006; Kim et al., 2005; European Public Administration Network,
2005; eGovernment Unit, 2004a, 2004b; Eschenfelder, 2004; Brebner and Parkinson,
2006; Kaylor et al., 2001; Barnes and Vidgen, 2003, 2006; Gotoh, 2009; Henriksson
et al., 2007; Korsten and Bothma, 2005; Horan et al., 2006; Smith, 2001) and quality
of e-services (Parasuraman et al., 2005; Zeithaml et al., 2000, 2002; Aladwani
and Palviab, 2002; Kelly and Vidgen, 2005; Loiacono et al., 2002; Webb and Webb,
2004).
As a result, 36 approaches have been analysed; for a detailed multi-faceted
classification of the existing literature in the field of quality of service for e-government
that was used to conceptualise the e-government model (e-GovQual) see Halaris et al.
(2007).
For a better insight at the phenomenon, Delphi method was used to initially assess
sample items to provide input for developing a conceptual model of e-government service
quality. An information systems unit professor and two information systems unit senior
researchers asked to evaluate the items, reword them if necessary and make changes so
that repetitive items and higher level and more general items were removed. After
two evaluation rounds, 33 e-government quality attributes remained in the list classified
under six main criteria determined as the e-government service quality dimensions: Ease
of Use (navigation, personalisation, technical efficiency), Trust (privacy, security),
Functionality of the interaction Environment (support in completing forms), Reliability
(accessibility, availability), Content and Appearance of Information and Citizen Support
(Interactivity).
2.1.2 Purification and validation of the instrument
After creating the conceptual model, there was a need to confirm whether the sample
of items depicted there capture the construct of e-government service quality. As a next
step, a questionnaire based on these criteria has been designed to elicit and assess
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
293
information on preferences of the citizens when evaluating e-government service and
governmental websites.
At first, we arranged the attributes chosen in a questionnaire phrased in
SERVQUAL’s format (Zeithaml et al., 1990). Each statement was reviewed so that its
wording would be as precise as possible. Each item was measured using a five-point
Likert scale relating to the citizen’s feelings about the site under assessment. The extent
to which the citizen believed the site had the feature described by the statement was
ranging from (1) ‘strongly disagree’ that the portal has the feature to (5) ‘strongly agree’.
There were also two more general sets of questions, with each statement inspecting the
citizen’s feelings for the six constructs, once for the site under examination and once for
an ideal site. Another question asked the citizens a total rate of the site under evaluation
and of course some demographic questions.
To refine and evaluate the scale to measure e-GovQual, an online survey took place.
Data collection was web based and respondents were notified about the survey along with
the link to the website from KEP’s homepage (www.kep.gov.gr). KEP is a governmental
site, which has been designed and developed for citizens’ electronic information and
service as well as for facilitating KEP’s employees in their everyday work by seeking
information on their work or even submitting an online application on behalf of a citizen.
The site’s information covers the entire scope of the Public Sector and dealings with
Public Administration. In addition, it gives the ability to submit electronic applications to
ΚΕP for a series of administrative documents, implementing a substantial step toward
electronic management in Greece. A total of 630 respondents that comprised citizens
along with KEP’s employees, answered the online survey between 6th of February 2007
and 19th of June 2007. The demographic profile of survey respondents indicated a mature
group of internet users who were very familiar with both web-usage and e-government
transactions.
The characteristics of the respondents were similar to internet user profiles gathered
in other studies (Kehoe et al., 1999). Finally, no monetary or bonus was given to the
respondents, as the responses were purely voluntary.
During data analysis and purification, we conducted reliability analysis by grouping
the items to the six conceptual dimensions from which they were derived. The most
widely used reliability coefficient is Cronbach’s coefficient alpha with acceptance level
at least 0.7 (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). The coefficient alpha values ranged from
0.84 to 0.92, exceeding the conventional minimum of 0.7 and demonstrating high internal
consistency and hence reliability of each dimension.
We refined the instrument (by reducing the list of items within each dimension) by
examining corrected item to total correlations and discarding items whose elimination
improved reliability or, in other words, Cronbach’s coefficient alpha, until no item’s
removal increased a construct’s overall alpha. The result was the removal of two items.
Prior to any removal, we ensured that the particular item could not be viewed as
representing a distinct additional construct.
In an attempt to identify internal consistency problems and improve reliability levels,
all items were screened along Churchill’s (1979) recommendations to make sure that no
items possess low correlations (less than 0.4) with similar traits, as also described by
Goodhue.
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We next conducted exploratory factor analysis to examine the dimensionality of the
scale.
With 33 questions in the initial questionnaire and a rule of thumb for factor analysis
of at least five times as many observations as there are variables to be analysed
(Hair et al., 1998; Stevens, 1996), at least 165 subjects were required. The 630
respondents of our survey quite exceeded the mentioned limit.
In our quest for a stable factor structure, we used principal components analysis as the
extraction method and Promax rotation method with Kaiser normalisation (Costello and
Osborne, 2005). The criterion to determine the initial number of factors to retain was that
the eigenvalues be greater than 1, but also taking the scree plot under consideration.
The initial factor analysis extracted four factors that were evident on the scree plot
and had an eigenvalue greater than one. We then eliminated ‘crossloading’ items
(items that load at 0.32 or higher on two or more factors). In this step, three items were
deleted.
Hair et al. (1998) suggest that item loadings > 0.3 are considered significant, item
loadings > 0.4 are more important and item loadings > 0.5 are considered very
significant. There are no accepted absolute standards for the cut-offs while the choice is
based on judgement, purpose of the study and prior studies. Our goal is to examine the
most significant loadings in interpreting the factor solution, so we decided to eliminate
items with loadings smaller than 0.5. Under these criteria, three items were eliminated
while another one item revealed its connection to a different factor than the one it was
appointed to, in the first place. Before any item was deleted, it was screened to make sure
it could not be viewed as representing a possible additional construct, while the item that
was moved from its intended construct to a different construct it correlated more highly
was screened to ensure that it has conceptual relation with its new construct. We then
resubmitted the remaining items to a second round of factor analysis where we reached a
meaningful factor structure where each item was found to load strongly on only one
factor (the results of the factor analysis are available by the authors upon request).
The factor analysis revealed a meaningful factor structure where each item was found
to load strongly on only one factor with four factors with eigenvalues > 1, whereas
the screen test concurred with a four factor solution, not six as proposed initially by
the authors. The four factors emerged from the factor analysis account for 70% of the
variance with most factor loadings above 0.60 as can be seen in Table 1.
Table 1
Principal components analysis
Factor analysis’ items’ loadings
Components
Factor
1 – efficiency
Ease of use
ClearStructure
0.768
SearchEngine
0.721
SiteMap
0.777
Customisation
0.883
Factor
2 – reliability
Factor 3 – citizen
support
Factor
4 – trust
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
Table 1
295
Principal components analysis (continued)
Factor analysis’ items’ loadings
Components
Factor
1 – efficiency
Factor
Factor 3 – citizen Factor
2 – reliability
support
4 – trust
Content and appearance of information
InfoDetail
0.873
InfoPrecision
0.744
InfoUpToDate
0.543
InfoRelevance
0.729
Functionality of the interaction environment
FormFastDownload
0.687
FormRecall OfPersonnalData
0.616
FormAutomaticCalculation
0.648
FormHelpInformation
0.669
Reliability
SiteAvailability
0.683
ServiceSuccessfulPerform
0.699
ServiceInTime
0.595
SiteFastDownload
0.909
BrowserCompatibility
0.783
Citizen support
HelpDeskInterest
0.830
HelpDeskPromtReply
0.888
HelpDeskKnowledge
0.972
HelpDeskTrust
0.873
Trust
SecureUsername-Password
0.760
PersonalDataMinimumProvision
0.892
DataProvidedSafety
0.782
DataProvidedUse
0.788
Extraction method: principal component analysis.
Rotation method: Promax with Kaiser normalisation.
Rotation converged in 6 iterations.
Total variance explained by the four factors: 69.066%.
Loadings < 0.30 not shown.
The above results derived by SPSS software package.
Items derived from the factors ‘ease of use’, “Functionality of the interaction
environment” and “Content and Appearance of Information” loaded on the same factor,
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X. Papadomichelaki and G. Mentzas
which was renamed ‘Efficiency’ reflecting the ease of using the site and the quality of
information an e-government site provides.
After reviewing the remaining constructs, we made certain that they all consist of
more than three items as suggested by Cronbach and Meehl (1955) – the shortest
construct had four items.
The outcome of the above process was the final e-GovQual Scale, consisting of
25 items, loading strongly on the following four dimensions:
Efficiency: The ease of using the site and the quality of information it provides (11 items).
More analytical this dimension takes into account the clear and easy-to-follow structure
of the site (ClearStructure), the effectiveness of the site’s search engine (SearchEngine),
how well the site’s map is organised (SiteMap), how well the site can be customised
to individual user’s needs (Customisation), whether the information displayed in the site
is appropriate detailed (InfoDetail), the accuracy of the displayed information on the site
(InfoPrecision), whether the information provided by the site is ‘fresh’ (InfoUpToDate),
the relevancy of information to the topic of the site (InfoRelevance), whether the
automatic recalling of user’s personal data within e-gov site’s forms is satisfactory
(FormRecallOfPersonnalData), the level of automatic calculation within e-gov site’s
forms (FormAutomaticCalculation) and finally whether there is enough information
about the site’s fields’ completion (FormHelpInformation).
Trust: The degree to which the citizen believes the site is safe from intrusion and
protects personal information (4 items). This dimension refers to the degree that the
acquisition of username and password in the site is secure (SecureUsername-Password),
the amount of personal data required for authentication on the e-gov site (PersonalData
MinimumProvision), whether data provided by users in the site are archived securely
(DataProvidedSafety) and whether data provided by the citizens are used only for the
reason they were submitted on the first place (DataProvidedUse).
Reliability: The feasibility and speed of accessing, using and receiving services of the site
(6 items). More detailed this dimension is comprised of the speed of downloading forms
from the e-gov site (FormFastDownload), whether the site is available and accessible
whenever the citizen needs it (SiteAvailability), the extent to which the site performs the
service successfully upon first request (ServiceSuccessful), whether the services provided
by the site are in time (PerformServiceInTime), how fast the site’s pages are downloaded
(SiteFastDownload) and finally whether the e-gov site works properly with any default
browser (BrowserCompatibility).
Citizen support: The ability to get help when needed (four items). This final dimension
deals with the interaction of the citizen with the employees of the site’s Help Desk while
experiencing some difficulties in their interaction with the e-gov site. It refers to the
interest shown by the employees in solving the citizen’s problem (HelpDeskInterest),
whether the employees give prompt replies to users’ inquiries (HelpDeskPromtReply),
whether the employees have the knowledge to answer the users’ questions
(HelpDeskKnowledge) and finally to the ability the employees have to convey trust and
confidence (HelpDeskTrust).
The scale items of the e-GovQual scale are depicted in Table 2. The two-level
structure of the questionnaire the four dimensions and their attributes quite coincide with
those of other surveys examined on service quality (Zeithaml et al., 1990), site quality
(Parasuraman et al., 2005; Zeithaml et al., 2000, 2002; Aladwani’s and Palviab’s, 2002;
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
297
Kelly and Vidgen, 2005; Loiacono et al., 2002; Webb and Webb, 2004), e-gov quality
(Eschenfelder, 2004; Barnes and Vidgen, 2003, 2006; Gotoh, 2009; Henriksson et al.,
2007) and, in general, with approaches dealing with the frontdesk-client/citizen
interaction both structurally and conceptually.
Table 2
e-GovQual scale
Efficiency
1
This e-government site’s structure is clear and easy to follow
2
This e-government site’s search engine is effective
3
This e-government site’s site map is well organised
4
This e-government site is well customised to individual users’ needs
5
The information displayed in this e-government site is appropriate detailed
6
The information displayed in this e-government site is accurate
7
The information displayed in this e-government site is fresh
8
The information displayed in this e-government site is relevant
9
Automatic recalling of user’s personal data within e-government site’s forms is satisfactory
10 The level of automatic calculation within e-government site’s forms is satisfactory
11 Information about field’s completion in this e-government site is enough
Trust
1
Acquisition of username and password in this e-government site is secure
2
Only necessary personal data are provided for authentication on this e-government site
3
Data provided by users in this e-government site are archived securely
4
Data provided in this e-government site are used only for the reason submitted
Reliability
1
Forms in this e-government site are downloaded in short time
2
This e-government site is available and accessible whenever you need it
3
This e-government site performs the service successfully upon first request
4
This e-government site provides services in time
5
E-government site’s pages are downloaded quickly enough
6
This e-government site works properly with your default browser
Citizen support
1
Employees showed a sincere interest in solving users’ problem
2
Employees give prompt replies to users’ inquiries
3
Employees have the knowledge to answer users’ questions
4
Employees have the ability to convey trust and confidence
This final version of 25 items measuring four dimensions was used to empirically
examine the scale’s structure and properties. During this empirical examination to
reconfirm the refined scale’s reliability and validity, another round of data collection took
place. Apart of the quality items, data were also collected concerning the demographics
together with general behaviour preferences as far as internet and e-government are
concerned. Furthermore, data about different relative importance of each website quality
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X. Papadomichelaki and G. Mentzas
factor, intentions of reuse and overall assessment of the site and the quality constructs
to have a first insight on the behavioural preferences of the citizens of Greece. This group
of data was used for this paper.
2.2 Data collection
In this stage, we administered the revised questionnaire to a random sample of internet
users through an online survey. A total of 1365 internet users were contacted, but only
the ones who had previous experience with e-government sites were considered as
qualified respondents. The rest were encouraged not to take the survey. Qualified
respondents were asked to list the three e-government sites with which they were most
familiar and then to evaluate the one they use the most. By that way, we collected
evaluations of sites with high popularity – they were the most visited e-government sites
– and at the same time, very different in terms of types, variety and quality of services
they provide.
The revised questionnaire consisted by the 25 items derived of the previous process
phrased in SERVQUAL’s format (Zeithaml et al., 1990). Each item was measured using
a five point Likert scale relating to the citizen’s feelings about the site under assessment.
The extent to which the citizen believed the site had the feature described by the
statement was ranging from (1) ‘strongly disagree’ that the portal has the feature to (5)
‘strongly agree’. There was also a more general set of four questions, with each statement
inspecting the citizen’s feelings concerning every dimension of the site under
examination. An additional question asked the citizens for an overall rate of the site under
evaluation. Two more questions checked the citizens’ intentions to reuse the site
for collecting information and for online submission. Finally, another question asked the
respondents to rank the four dimensions of the revised e-GovQual as general
characteristics related with e-government sites and the services they provide and in the
end of course some demographic and usage questions.
To collect the data, respondents were directed to a website containing the revised
questionnaire, which they then self administered. This process yielded 264 completed
questionnaires. This sample size exceeded the conventional requirement that about five
observations per scale item are needed for conducting factor analyses (Hair et al., 1998;
Stevens, 1996).
Respondents that comprised of citizens that had visited at least an e-government site,
answered the online survey between 19th of November 2007 and 28th of February 2008.
The demographic profile of survey respondents indicated a mature group of internet users
who were very familiar with both web-usage and e-government transactions. Among the
264 respondents, 52.7% were male, whereas 47.3% were female. Ages of respondents
varied but were much more than student-based surveys with 10% of the respondents
being under the age of 25, 54.4% ranging from 26 to 35; 28.4% ranging from 36 to 45,
6.1% ranging from 46 to 55 and 1.2% were above 56 years. A very large portion, 87%
of the respondents had at least college education, whereas 46.6% had at least Masters
Degree; 29.9% was working as freelancers, 29.5% was working for public sector and
25.7% was working as private sector employees. Use of the internet was heavy among
the participants, with 46.9% of the respondents surfing in internet more than 20 hours per
week. The 82% of the survey respondents visit an e-government site at least once a
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
299
month, while the e-government sites mostly visited are the Internal Revenue Site together
with Ministries/General Secretariats sites; 70.5% of the respondents visit an
e-government site looking for information, whereas 52.9% for conducting an online
submission. The characteristics of the respondents also for the second survey were
similar to internet user profiles gathered in other studies (Kehoe et al., 1999). In this
survey, just like in the first one no monetary or bonus was given to the respondents,
as the responses were purely voluntary. Table 3 summarises some of the demographic
information collected.
Table 3
Demographic Information
Which of the following categories best describes the
duration you access the web within a week?
What is your gender?
Male
52.7%
More than 20 h
46.9%
Female
47.3%
11–20 h
17.2%
What is your age?
Less than 16
0.4%
6–10 h
17.2%
1–5 h
15.6%
16–25
9.6%
26–35
54.4%
How frequently do you visit an e-government site?
Less than an hour
3.1%
36–45
28.4%
Daily
11.5%
46–55
6.1%
At least once a week
26.1%
56–65
0.8%
At least once a month
44.4%
More than 65
0.4%
At least once per year
18.0%
Please indicate the highest level of education List the three e-government sites with which you are
completed
most familiar with*
PhD degree
14.1%
Internal revenue service
67.2%
Masters degree
32.4%
Ministries/general secretariats
67.2%
Bachelors degree
40.5%
Citizen service centre
38.8%
High school diploma
12.2%
Social security institute
17.2%
Gymnasium diploma
0.8%
Municipalities
10.8%
Which of the following categories best
describes your professional status?
Pupil
University/college student
Academic faculty
Government employee
Supreme council for civil personnel
selection
0.4% National printery
10.7% Prefectures
1.1% Other
9.6%
6.8%
3.6%
21.2%
29.5% What were you primarily looking for on this portal?*
Private sector employee
25.7% Information
70.5%
Free lancer
29.9% Online submission
52.9%
Unemployed
2.7%
Retired
0.0%
*Multiple response questions (percent of cases).
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2.3 Data analysis
More insight to the demographic information reveals that 40.1% of the male population
who use e-government services work as freelancers, 20.4% as government employees
and 20.4% as private sector employees, whereas 39.8% of the female population work as
government employees, 30.9% as private sector employees and 18.7% as freelancers.
In addition, 50.4% of the male population that have previous experience with
e-government sites has at least Masters Degree in contrast to the 43.1% of the female
population.
The 77.3% of the male population (users of e-government sites) use internet more
than 11 h per week, whereas the respective percentage for female population is 49.2%
(Figure 1(a)). While as far as the frequency of internet use of the e-government users is
concerned, we can notice that women possess the 72.5% and men the 27.5% of the
respondents that surf on the internet 1-5 h per week and the above percentage is inversed
to reach the 33.1% for women and 76.9% for men, respectively, in more than 20 h of
weekly internet use (Figure 1(b)).
Figure 1
Frequency of internet use vs. gender
The 54.6% of the population up to the age of 35 surf on the internet more than 20 h per
week, whereas the respective percentage for ages above 36 falls to 33.8%. In addition, the
43% of those who surf on internet more than 20 h per week are freelancers.
Another comment that can be made concerns the difference in the frequency of use of
an e-government site between the male and female respondents. Among the respondents
that use e-government sites daily, the 63.3% is female population in contrast to the 36.7%
of the male. As the frequency of e-government use decreases, the percentages are
inverted.
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
301
As far as the relation of the e-government sites mostly used with the two genders
is concerned, we notice a distinct difference particularly in the Internal Revenue
Service and the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection. While 75.4% of the
male respondents use the Internal Revenue Service frequently, only 59.8% of the female
respondents use the same site correspondingly. Although 15.4% of the female
respondents visit the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection regularly, only 4.6%
of the male respondents visit the same site, respectively. For the rest of the sites, the
population is distributed in a similar way (Figure 2(a)).
If we examine the frequency of use of e-government in relation with the
e-government sites mostly used, we can observe that 85% of those who visit daily an
e-government site visit websites of Ministries. The above percentage declines to 47.5% as
the frequency of visits drops to at least one visit per year. Exactly the reverse
phenomenon happens for the Internal Revenue Service. While only 46.4% of the
respondents who visit in a daily basis an e-government site use Internal Revenue Service,
this percentage increases to 77% for a monthly visit and 75% for an annual visit
(Figure 2(b)).
Figure 2
(a) Most frequently used sites vs. gender (multi response question) and (b) frequency
of e-government use vs. the two most frequently used sites (multi response question)
As we observe, the professional status in comparison with the e-government sites most
frequently used what marks out is that the 90.7% of the freelancers use the Internal
Revenue Service site.
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X. Papadomichelaki and G. Mentzas
It is also noteworthy that there is a clear relation between the educational status and
the frequency of internet use. The higher the educational status is, the higher is the
frequency of internet use.
Intention to reuse the e-government site both for information and service delivery
has a positive relation with the frequency of internet use, as well as with the
educational status and finally with the evaluation of the citizens of the four dimensions.
The higher the frequency of use or the higher the educational Status or the higher the
evaluation of the citizens for the four dimensions, the stronger is the intension of site
reuse.
Concerning the dimensions that the citizens regard as the most important in an
e-government site, 42.2% considers efficiency as the most important dimension, 32.2%
considers trust, 19.2% reliability, whereas 6.1% ranks as that the most important
dimension citizen support. However, as least important dimension, 55.6% regarded
citizen support, the 26.3% considered trust, whereas reliability and efficiency
were considered as the least important dimension by 9.1% of the respondents each
(Figure 3).
Figure 3
Ranking of the four dimensions
Trust is considered to be very important as 58.6% of the respondents ranked it as the first
or second most important dimension. Moreover, 78.3% of those who ranked
trust dimension as the most important one use Internal Revenue Service sites and
62.5% of citizens that use online submission regard trust as the most important
dimension.
Among the citizens that ranked reliability as the most important dimension, 80.6%
use Internal Revenue Service. In addition, 72.6% of the respondents that consider
efficiency as the most important dimension are information seekers in comparison with
only 46.4% that are interactors. However, 44.9% of the citizens that uses frequently
Ministries’ websites that mainly provide information, regard efficiency as the most
important dimension. Finally citizen support dimension seems to be the less important
dimension regardless of the type of sites most frequently used or the type of services
mostly required.
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
303
A summary table (Table 4) gives more information on the data. The first four
questions rank the four dimensions relating with e-government sites and the services
they provide (1 = the most important, 4 = the least important). The second four questions
refer to the evaluation of the citizens of the four dimensions, respectively. An overall
site evaluation follows and finally two questions concerning the service reuse intention
and the information reuse intention. In the last seven questions, each item was measured
using a five-point Likert scale where the higher the score the most positive the
evaluation.
Moreover, in Table 4, it is obvious that the most important dimension is efficiency,
whereas the least important is citizen support. From the sites the respondents most
frequently use, citizen support seems to be less satisfactory dimension. Lastly, although
the overall site evaluation appears to be lower than the evaluations of the four
dimensions, both the service reuse intention and the information reuse intention are
considerable higher.
Table 4
Summary of the data: mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values
Description
Mean
St. dev
Min
Max
Ranking of efficiency dimension
2.03
1.019
1
4
Ranking of reliability dimension
2.33
0.951
1
4
Ranking of citizen support dimension
3.10
1.002
1
4
Ranking of trust dimension
2.34
1.157
1
4
Evaluation of the site concerning efficiency dimension
3.48
0.858
1
5
Evaluation of the site concerning reliability dimension
3.57
0.859
1
5
Evaluation of the site concerning citizen support
dimension
3.12
1.071
1
5
Evaluation of the site concerning trust dimension
3.62
0.955
1
5
Overall site evaluation
2.93
0.989
1
5
Service reuse intention
4.06
1.075
1
5
Information reuse intention
4.03
0.963
1
5
3
Findings and related work
In this paper we were particularly interested to discover the quality priorities of each
e-government user and we tried to analyse and depict the attitude the Greek citizens
have towards the existing e-government sites in Greece. Finally, we were interested in
implications for e-government practitioners to enhance citizens reuse intention of the
sites. Overall, we gathered valuable information concerning the way Greek users interact
with e-government in Greece.
During the analysis process of this paper, several interesting results emerged. First,
this research found that all of the four dimensions efficiency, trust, reliability and citizen
support significantly influence citizens’ evaluation of overall e-government site quality
and intention to reuse. Users of e-government considered efficiency as the most
important factor. The great importance of this dimension has also been noted by other
researchers (Santos, 2003; Gefen et al., 2003; Clyde, 2000; Zhang and Von Dran, 2001;
304
X. Papadomichelaki and G. Mentzas
Dwivedi and Weerakkody, 2007) for website quality. Trust is also highly ranked as
has already been stressed in other studies (Gefen et al., 2003; Chiang, 2009) referring to
site quality, indicating that organisations should expend more effort to make the site
safer. The need for trust on the web seems to be an issue of paramount importance
(Urban et al., 2000), regardless of people’s cultural profiles (Huang, 2001).
Second, this study revealed that e-government users perceived different importance
of quality factors in using different types of e-government sites. For example, in an
e-government site where online submission takes place trust was considered to be the
most important factor, whereas efficiency was the most important factor in sites mainly
informational. This result coincides with a finding in e-business literature (Alburquerque
and Belchior, 2002; Tang et al., 2009). Next, although citizen support had only a minor
effect on overall e-government site quality in this study, its importance should not be
underestimated. Citizen support might be the least important dimension but as showed
by Parasuraman et al. (2005) for e-commerce is basically salient when a citizen has
non-routine encounters with the site. It is also interesting to mention, as Lovelock and
Yip (1996) demonstrated that it is when services involve a high degree of interaction
between customers and service personnel that cultural elements have the greater
influence.
Third, the analytical results showed that the ‘digital divide’ is apparent in Greece
as it is in other countries as well. The term ‘digital divide’ refers to the gap between
individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic
levels with regard to their opportunities to access information and communication
technologies (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001). In the
current study, only three parameters of ‘digital divide’ could be examined, i.e., gender,
age and education. Consistent with previous studies (Levy, 2002; Losh, 2003; Huesing
and Selhofer, 2002) in the USA and EU, this study found a positive relationship between
education and internet use and a negative relationship between age and internet use. More
specifically in the context of e-government there are more European studies from France
(Mellor et al., 2002) and Turkey (Mellor and Parr, 2002a) and one from New Zealand
(Mellor and Parr, 2002b) that concur that the most threatened groups considerably
lagging behind are people with low education and elderly people. However, prior
literature on the influence of gender on the use of internet and e-government produced
conflicting results. Some researchers (Losh, 2003; Huesing and Selhofer, 2002) and
(Mellor and Parr, 2002b) identified the gap between genders significant to affect
propensity to use internet and e-government while other group of researchers
(Levy, 2002; Mellor et al., 2002a, 2002b) found that the gender has no effect, something
that unfortunately we did not experience in this study. Losh (2003) also emphasises the
existence of gender gap in internet use and it attributes it to the fact that women and men
in US have different educational and occupational experiences.
As far as implications for practitioners are concerned, this study suggests that to
enhance citizen reuse intentions and site assessment, e-government sites should devote
organisation resources to the important e-government quality dimensions identified by
this study. First, website design and information quality cannot be ignored. E-government
site design is an important means to provide customer usefulness and ease of use during
online transaction processes. Second, improvement on the level of credibility, security by
developing strict security policies and adopt advanced security technologies is a necessity
as these factors affect the reuse intention of the citizen.
Analysing e-government service quality in Greece
4
305
Conclusions
Motivated by the growing interest in e-government, the broader goal of our research
consists of the conceptualisation of an e-government quality model (e-GovQual) and
then the construction, refinement and testing of a multi-item scale that captures key
characteristics of e-government site quality from the citizen’s perspective and measures
the service quality delivered by governmental sites. Based on classical theories, we
proposed a research model under the framework of SERVQUAL model which posits four
dimensions influential to e-government site quality – efficiency, trust, reliability, citizen
support. An instrument was conceptualised constructed refined and tested using a sample
of 630 citizens while the measurement validity of the final instrument was tested by a
second confirmatory sample of 264 citizens with previous experience with e-government
sites. Data collected from the second round of data collection was also analysed to
discover the quality priorities of each e-government user in Greece. Moreover, the
findings of this study provide e-government practitioners with useful insights to enhance
site quality. In other words, the objective of this research was to depict the attitudes and
the preferences of the Greek citizens-users of e-government and to examine which
behaviours are specific for Greek population and which are more general. Moreover, our
effort may also help practitioners, managers and developers in building e-government
sites that meet the citizens’ needs.
This study has also limitations that should be revisited in future studies. First, the
e-government sites used in the study might not represent all e-government domains. Each
respondent was asked to evaluate only the site they are most familiar with, so previous
experience of respondents with certain sites was not measured. Demographic limitation
of the study is the fact that the sample size itself is relatively small. To accurately
evaluate Greek citizens’ perceptions of e-government service quality, a larger sample size
is desirable. Finally, as the sample was collected in Greece, generalisability to other
countries might be limited due to cultural differences and different level of e-government
maturity. Future work can focus on examining and comparing more parameters of digital
divide, based on the relative importance of each construct get an e-government quality
score and find out how national culture influences the determination of e-government site
quality.
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