Antecedents of Trust in E-Government: Palestinian Citizens' Perspective

Abstract

Many countries in the Middle East region are adopting the e-government portals to provide services to the citizens. Citizens should be satisfied with these portals and judge them as trustworthy in order to participate in the e-government activities as a primary stakeholder. This study aims to investigate the antecedents of trust in e-government in Palestine from citizens' perspective. The proposed model consisted of four main constructs including technical, governmental, risk factors, and propensity to trust in technology, in addition to five demographic characteristics (age, gender, educational level, income, and internet experience). A closed question questionnaire was designed to collect data, 340 valid questionnaires were retrieved. Simple and Multiple regression analysis were used to build an adequate model. Findings revealed that each construct has separately influenced trust level in e-government, but when combined together, technical and governmental factors have positive influence on citizens' trust level in e-government services, risk factors have a negative influence, whereas the influence of propensity to trust was eliminated. Surprisingly, demographic characteristics showed no statistically significant differences in the level of citizens' trust in e-government. These findings may help government official in improving e-government services by enhancing security measures adopted on the e-government portals thus encouraging citizens to use these services