Public Acceptance of M-Government Services in Developing Countries

Abstract

Mobile telecommunications networks have been exploited over the past few years as a means to provide additional flow of information and services to citizens and businesses. This is in addition to using the conventional channels such as the Internet, landline telephones, kiosks, and call centers. The use of mobile communication technology to offer public services to citizens and firms is referred to as mobile government (m-government). In developing countries such as Jordan, there has been an increasing interest in the provision of m-government services. However, the majority of citizens have still never used them. The research reported in this chapter intends to address the m-government adoption issues in an empirical field study that extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with two constructs related to the uncertain context of m-government: trust and information privacy. The results indicate that the strong predictors of citizen intention to use m-government services are performance and effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and trust. Surprisingly, the results also suggest that information privacy is not a significant predictor of citizen intention to use m-government services. The theoretical and managerial implications of these results are also discussed.