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World Applied Programming, Vol (3), Issue (5), May 2013. 190-199ISSN: 2222-2510

2013 WAP journal. www.tijournals.com

190

A Study of the Effects of Technology Acceptance Factors

on Users Satisfaction of E-Government Services

Belghis Bavarsad Mohammad Ali Mennatyan

Assistant professor of Management,Shahid Chamran University (SCU) of

Ahvaz, Iran.

Master of Management,Shahid Chamran University (SCU),

Ahvaz, [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract: This paper tries to study the effects that the technology acceptance factors have on e-government

services users satisfaction. The study data were gathered from a sample of 396 users of e-government services

in Booshehr Province, Iran. The data collection tool was a structured questionnaire, its reliability was confirmed

by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (=0.91). Data were analyzed by Structural equation modeling (SEM) using

AMOS software. The analysis results indicated a good fit for the proposed model and the research findings also

supported the positive and significant effect of the ease of use, trust, content and appearance of information and

perceived usefulness on e-service users satisfaction. However, no significant relationship was found betweencitizens support with the users satisfaction of e-service quality.

Keywords: Technology Acceptance Factors, Structural Equations Model, Services, Users Satisfaction, e-

Government

INTRODUCTION

Today, the developed countries have adopted a new economic indicator, known as customer satisfaction, for variousindustries beside other indicators, because of its importance in economic prosperity of a nation (Sharbat Oughli &Ekhlasi, 2008: 57). Customer satisfaction is an important factor in customer maintenance and this becomes more obvious

when we learn that maintaining the existing customers costs less than attracting new ones, and it brings abundant profitfor a firm/organization. Given the importance of satisfaction in maintaining the customers, most organizations aim at

achieving customer satisfaction. In order to satisfy the customers, their demands and requirements must be taken into

account. The fact those customers demands, requirements and expectations change over time leads to the necessity ofcustomer satisfaction monitoring in a continuous way (Ranjbaran et al, 2002: 129).

Also, provision of suitable services is another factor affecting customers satisfaction and consequently, customer

maintenance; and customers satisfaction of the provided services leads to recommending the products/services to othersby the customers. An organization which has planned the provision of suitable services based on customer demands and

expectations as one of its practical objectives can be a successful organization relying on other business principles. In therecent years, citizens expectations and dissatisfaction of services provided by public organizations have elevated and

there is little probability that they accept a quality lower than desirable. In this situation, political inertia and bureaucracy

may lead to the loss of official and political agents credit. Therefore, public organizations should accept such socialchanges (citizens becoming more critic and claimant) as a reliable source (Korunak et al, 2007). On the other hand, the

clients awareness of the quality of other organizations services has elevated and as the number of competitorsincreases, clients would not accept every service any more (Saeeda Ardekani et al., 2009).

An option for the governments to enhance the quality of services and transforming it is to employ ICT and e-government. The main channel and medium for providing e-services is the organizations websites through which all

services would be provided. Public agencies form a center for provision of services used by the whole nation. Thegovernment usually provides quality services but citizens are not satisfied of them. Also, there is strong evidence that

private sector provides higher quality services than public sector (Sinha, 1999). But in the recent years the governmentsconsideration of providing quality service to the citizens has become more obvious, the governments now are facing thequestion how to provide faster, better, cheaper and higher- quality services (Alvani & Reihani, 2003).

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Belghis Bavarsad and Mohammad Ali Mennatyan. World Applied Programming, Vol (3), No (5), May 2013.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

E-Satisfaction

Customers' satisfaction refers to their opinion and judgment on a specific purchase. Satisfaction refers to the customers'

judgment of the value they have received. Customer satisfaction has many benefits for economic entities such thatdifferent studies show that increased satisfaction leads to reduced customer sensitivity towards price, reduced marketing

costs, and increased effectiveness of advertisements and reputation (Mansouri & Kazemzadeh Brothers, 2007: 3).Blanchard and Galloway believe that customer satisfaction results from a customers perception during a value-baseddeal or relation so that the price equals the ratio of performed services to the customer costs and price (Hallowell, 1996,

p. 28). It should be noted that quality of goods/services plays the most essential role in client satisfaction/dissatisfaction.Therefore, pioneering and excellent organizations always try to ensure of their clients satisfaction (Wick and Leon,

1995:301 ) because the clients higher satisfaction levels is some kind of insurance against organizations potential

mistakes which are inevitable as a result of changes related to services production. Constant clients show higher

indulgence when faced with such circumstances because, as a result of previous satisfactory experience are prone toeasily ignore the organizations small faults. Thus, it is not surprising that clients satisfaction achievement has becomethe organizations most important task (A'ali, 2002).

E-satisfaction refers to the customers satisfaction of the support for receiving and sending orders for goods/services;after-sale services; price of goods and services; website content quality; website loading time; website reliability;

websites ease of use; and security. That is, e-satisfaction refers to a customers satisfaction with attention to their

previous shopping experience at an e-commerce corporation. Also, e-satisfaction has been defined as the preference for

goods/services of a given e-corporation over the competition when shopping. Bauer and Grether (2002) in their study ofthe characters existing in the Internet introduced the factors determining e-satisfaction as: information accessibility level,

communication structure, individualization, integrated information and transactions (Negahdari, 2009). There is a keydifference between e-satisfaction and physical commerce environment satisfaction which is, the features of Internet as amedium and its implications directly influence the perceived e-satisfaction. For instance, ease of information

downloading, ease of payment, website structure and alike, all influence e-satisfaction (Azizi & Negahdari, 2012).

FACTORS AFFECTING USERSSATISFACTION OF E-GOVERNMENTS SERVICES

Although the issue of satisfaction has been greatly discussed in the literatures of Information Systems, e-Commerce and

Marketing (DeLo,ne & McLean, 1992; Liu et al., 2008), enough attention has not been paid to the identification of the

factors affecting customer (citizen)s satisfaction of e-government services. Recently, some researchers (Liao & Chang,2008) have begun evaluating the factors influencing customer satisfaction of e-government services.

There is much empirical evidence that technology acceptance factors are able to explain the users tendency towards

technology acceptance. Studies performed by Geffen and Straub (1997) on e-mail acceptance, Gapar et al. (2011) on e-

commerce acceptance, Chen and colleagues (2002) on virtual stores, Cofaris & Labarbara (2002) on e-customerbehavior, Ching et al (2011) on e-banking acceptance, all have confirmed the role of technology acceptance factors in

accepting these technologies. The effect of technology acceptance factors on customer satisfaction has also been provedby the same research line (Huang et al., 2011). Users experience of technology application might be the major criteria

for evaluation of customers satisfaction of the services provided by a website (Kumar et al., 2012).

Technology acceptance factors are considered as valuable tools in predicting satisfaction (Alghahtani & King, 1999),

customer services improvement (Mathison, 1991), and service quality improvement. Previous works was built on

technology acceptance model and its extension in order to assess its application on the Internet. Riyadh and colleagues

(2009) demonstrated that technology model had many applications in assessing customer satisfaction of e-banking inMalaysia. Yang and Fang (2004) also stated that technology acceptance factors greatly affected the customers

satisfaction of online service-providing (Alsudary, 2005).

PERCEIVED EASE OF USE

Ease of use refers to the extent to which it is easy for citizens to interact with a website (Chau & Hu, 2001). Anindividuals perception of ease of use refers to the degree to which they believe that little mental effort is needed in order

to learn how to use and work with a specific system. Numerous researches on information systems revealed that ease ofuse affects the intention to use (Taylor & Todd, 1995). A websites ease of use depends on various aspects such as ease

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of system management for the user, easy to keep basic operations in mind, website design efficiency level, errorreduction percentage, and users overall satisfaction in the management area (Wirtz & Chew, 2002).

In Information Systems literature, ease of use is recognized as a factor affecting customer satisfaction (Torkzadeh &

Doll, 1988; McHaney & Cronan, 1988), service quality assessment (DeLone & McLean, 1992), and technologyacceptance (Davis, 1989). Ease of use appears frequently in studies examining the key dimensions of web quality or the

factors influencing customer satisfaction. Among others, Liao and Chang (2008) suggested that ease of use is aneffective factor in customer satisfaction of e-banking. Thus, it might be said that ease of use is an effective factor in

customer satisfaction of e-government services.

CONTENT AND APPEARANCE OF INFORMATION

This dimension refers to the quality of information and its display such as proper use of colors, graphics and web page

size (Hoffman & Krauss, 2004). The features of applied systems and the information contained therein are among thefactors affecting IT acceptance. Effective communication, website design and its content are known as key factors

determining the perceived quality of e-services. (Lin & Lee, 2005). Some websites are not fully used because of

improper customization and user support.

In the same way that aspects such as completeness, accuracy, brevity and relevance are considered as positive features of

information, excess or scarcity are negative ones. Timeliness of information is also a critical factor because previous

works has shown that e-government website are not updated regularly (Santos, 2003). Correct links are complementaryto the information provided by the website and therefore proper links should be selected and maintained. Also these links

should be routinely monitored for solving any potential problem. Easy perception of documents or information provided

in the website is essential particularly in the case of formal documents which contain specialized terminology and areformulated in an official jargon. Another required characteristic is the aesthetic one recognized with features such as

colors used, graphics, animation, and size of web pages. Visual impact of a web page can have a considerable influenceon user experience and has important implications for effective communications (Papadomichelaki & Mentzas, 2012).

Ranganathan & Ganapathy (2002) state that website design has an important role in attracting and maintainingcustomers interest in the website. Also, many investigations provide empirical evidence that website design influences

user satisfaction (Liu et al, 2008; Zviran et al, 2006). On the other hand, key features of a website may be classified intoits content or design. Content refers to the information provided by a website. Content has an essential role in influencing

customers behavior. Therefore, many studies focused on content (or information content) as a factor affecting the

website quality (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002).

CITIZEN SUPPORT

Supporting the citizens refers to the assistance provided by organizations to citizens towards browsing required

information or during interaction with the website. This assistance may include user guide, existence of help pages in the

website and presenting the frequently asked questions with their answers within the website (Zeithaml et al., 2002).Provision of supportive mechanisms and systems support capabilities is another important factor of technology

acceptance. Such mechanisms can help users in the case of their unawareness of employed technology or unforeseen

events (Gupta & Gupta, 2008). According to Joseph and Stone (2003), user support services refer to the ability to

respond to the potential problems in purchased goods/services, or the purchase process itself; and the ability to solvecustomer concerns and difficulties.

Thus, the user support services could be recognized as the service quality responsiveness dimension which influences

satisfaction. Numerous studies confirm the association between this dimension and quality service or customer

satisfaction of effective e-government services (Jun & Cai, 2001; Liao and Chung, 2002). Those studies showed thatresponsiveness (customer support) lead to higher customer satisfaction.

ISPs need to pay more attention to supporting their customers in order to achieve their satisfaction. Customer satisfaction

is determined by their evaluation of the service provided by the firms website (Gustafsson et al., 2005). Anne and

colleagues (2006) demonstrated that when customers could not convey their complaint appropriately to the firm, theywould shift to other firms. This could be due to the fact that customer service centers do not consider the customer

complaints or the customers can not reflect them appropriately.

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RELIABILITY

Reliability refers to the degree to which citizens rely upon governments websites in terms of appropriate and timely

provision of services. This includes proper technical functioning (accessibility and usability), and fulfillment of

promises. Accessibility is a general term which mostly refers to the extent to which a system is usable for most userswithout need for modification. Usability refers to the extent to which a system is affected by problems or interference in

providing service to citizens as a result of failures in one or more of its sections. Usability of a website can be improvedby ensuring 24 h access, loading speed and transaction speed (Papadomichelaki & Mentzas, 2012). Reliability ofservices refers to the capability of providing promised services in a correct, timely and reliable manner. Reliability

means the ability to provide the promised services in a correct, reliable and continuous fashion. For instance, usersvisiting a government website expect to be provided with appropriate, timely and high-quality services. Reliability is

measure of a websites ability to meet such expectations. Another significance of reliability is the fulfillment of primary

commitments. That is, if a service organization makes promises towards customers, it should fulfill them.

In e- businesses, completion of a new order requires appropriate infrastructures in both logistics and IT; and has alwaysbeen a concern for e-marketers (Heim & Field, 2007). Most online businesses use third party logistic firms to meet this

requirement and therefore they may not control the goods delivery speed in those firms. Customers are not usually

satisfied with the reliability of online-provided services. If there is an unreliable information system, numerous problemsarise in service providing which may influence customer satisfaction (Behjati et al., 2012).

TRUST

Users trust is defined as intention to trust a business partner who is reliable. Trust involves security and privacyprotection and refers to citizens trust in a website in terms of lack of risks during the interaction process with that

website (Das & Teng, 2001).

Trust is a strategy which enables the individuals to adapt with a complex social environment thereby benefit from

increasing opportunities. Trust is specifically associated with unawareness or uncertainty conditions and involves other

individuals actions' being unidentifiable. Trust consists of appropriate expectations of other individuals actions that

have commitment to select their actions, when they are able to monitor others actions before selecting the action. Trustis introduced when reliable expectations bring disorders in decisions (Zetomka, 2007). Trust is a product of

psychological intentions which are beyond immediate control of any public organization. Such permanent intentions are

linked to long term social intention to believe in social organizations and that if individuals trust others; better resultswill occur (Carter & Belanger, 2008).

Since e-government is based on Internet which is an open network, security is an important factor in functions of e-

government. Despite various technical advancements such as message encoding, and digital signatures and certificates,

customers are still concerned about the security of their transactions while using Internet (Ranganathan & Ganapathy,2002). Removing security concerns will lead to higher user satisfaction levels. Reliability is an important element in

building relations. Customers trust in a firm in the Internet is determined by the connection through telephone or e-mail,and in general, customers experience with that firm.

Two important issues the customers are concerned about when doing e-transactions include their security and privacy,especially in terms of their personal information. Que and colleagues (2009) found that customers are concerned with the

security of their personal information when doing e-shopping. Information provided in a website during e-shopping may

be abused by hackers (Behjati et al., 2012). Security and privacy protection greatly affects customers e-satisfaction

(Szymanski & Hise, 2000). Most researchers agree that security-related issues have a strong influence on e-transactionsand customer satisfaction.

PERCEIVED USEFULNESS

An individuals perceptions on usefulness of an informative technology depend on the extent to which they believe that

using a specific technology leads to the improvement of their professional performance within an organization or helpsbetter performance of tasks. Such a help may be realized through reducing task performance time or timely provision of

information (Doll et al., 1998).

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In e-government terms, this performance refers to the usefulness of users interaction with the website of the intendedpublic organization and benefits they achieve through this interaction. Horton and colleagues (2001) believe that

perceived usefulness positively affects the intention to use Internet. In 2008, Carter examined the effects of three factors:

perceived usefulness, ease of use, trust in Internet, trust in government, computer self-efficiency and previous interaction

experience with e-government among 105 American citizens and found that the perceived usefulness construct was themost powerful predictor of intention to use e-government.

Usefulness and design are important in human-computer interaction because they influence users satisfaction and task

performance when using computers (Palmer, 2002). The good design of a website leads to increased profitability andmay influence the websites success. Most online customers use the Internet to search for goods which are not found in

real-world stores (Barsia, 2000). Therefore, websites should provide different kinds of goods and services and make

needed information available to customers in order to attract them.

The main reason why customers use the Internet is the usefulness factor. They can easily do whatever they like within a

website. Firms providing more varied products and services have the chance to have more customers. For those who aredissatisfied with the products in real stores, provision of new products in a website may prove satisfactory (Behjati et al.,

2012).

RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Researchers have tried to assess the customers satisfaction of e-government services among which Horan andAbhichandani (2006), An assessment of user satisfaction in e-government: results of structural equations and focus

group discussions can be pointed out. In their research in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, they used variables such as

usefulness, reliability, efficiency, personalization, flexibility, and adaptation, to identify the factors affecting citizens'satisfaction. They found that usefulness, efficiency and adaptation were the factors affecting sentimental satisfaction.

Hsu (2008) developed an index of e-customers satisfaction. Modifying the American customer satisfaction model, he

found trust, perceived value and e-service quality as factors affecting users' satisfaction.

In the same line, Welch, Hinant and Moon (2004) in their research on the relationship between customer satisfaction, e-

government and trust in government, found that using the governments website was positively related to satisfactionfrom e-government and from the website; and that satisfaction from e-government was positively related to trust in the

government. Devaraj et al. (2002) identified the implications of satisfaction from B2C and presented usability, ease of

use, time, cost efficiency and reliability as factors affecting satisfaction.

Lai and Piers (2010) found four success factors affecting users satisfaction of e-government services while testing a

model for assessment of acceptance of and satisfaction from e-government portal. They include: information quality,

perceived usefulness, system quality and social impacts.

Examining 18 government-owned websites in South Korea, Byun and Finnie (2011) identified usefulness and perceivedusability, websites proper design and ease of e-service use as the most important measures of customer satisfaction of e-government services.

Also, in a quantitative study, Verdegem and Verleve (2009) explored the factors affecting citizens satisfaction of e-

government. Using Johnston and Murray (1995)s model, they examined 15 factors influencing users' satisfaction whichincluded: reduced executive load, reliability, cost effectiveness, usability, ease of use, security, content readability,

privacy protection, respect and courtesy, content quality, transparency, responsiveness, accessibility, flexibility and

personal contact. Their research results showed that all aforesaid 15 factors were important in citizens satisfaction and

they should be all applied when assessing satisfaction.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL AND RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

The conceptual model for this research was built on Davis technology acceptance model (1985) and Papadomichelaki

& Mentzas e-service quality model (2012).

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Accordingly, the following hypotheses were tested:

H1. Ease of use significantly affects e-government service quality.H2. Content and appearance of information significantly affect e-customer satisfaction.

H3. Reliability significantly affects e-customer satisfaction.H4. Trust significantly affects e-customer satisfaction.

H5.Perceived usefulness significantly affects e-government service quality

METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH

The research method for the present paper was an applied method based on the purpose, and a descriptive method basedon data collection method and is a correlation, correlation matrix analysis or covariance type because in the present paper

the relationship between variables is derived and examined based on factor analysis (Sarmad et al. 2012).The statistical population for this paper includes all customers (clients) of public organizations who use e-government

services in Booshehr Province, southern Iran. As collecting information from totality of population was infeasible in

practice (and even if feasible, impractical in terms of time, costs and other required facilities) a sample was selected the

size of which was determined using the Cochrane equation where p is the success ratio and is estimated

based on researchers guess or previous research. If there is not the possibility of such estimation, the success ratio is

considered as 0.5 where the sample size increases to its highest possible value (Momeni, 2010).

p= the ratio of society members who have the feature in question

q= the ratio of society members who do not have the feature in question (1-p)= 5% confidence coefficient

= confidence distance (1.96)

Based on peoples participation rates, 500 questionnaires were distributed among which 396 questionnaires were usableand were used in analyses.

Questionnaires were field-distributed. They had been developed based on literature review in marketing, e-service andtechnology usage areas. In the research questionnaire, the perceived ease of use was assessed by 4 items and the

perceived usefulness, too, with 4 items based on those suggested by Davis et al. (1989). Content and appearance ofinformation, reliability, citizen support and trust constructs were assessed based on scales provided by Parasuraman et

al. (2005), Papadomichelaki & Mentzas (2012), Zeithaml et al. (2002) and Collier & Bienstuck (2006).

The satisfaction from e-government services construct was assessed using 4 items with the scales proposed by Jhong &Prybutok (2005). All questions were assessed using 5-point Likert scale (from completely agree to completely disagree).

In order to ensure validity and reliability of data collection tools, the content validity (formal and logical) was confirmed

Perceived Ease of Use

Reliability

Citizen Support

Trust

Users Satisfaction

Content and Appearanceof Information

Perceived Usefulness

Figure 1.proposed model

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by professionals and their opinion was used to modify the questionnaire. Reliability was determined by Cronbach's alpha(Sarmad et al. 2008) and the following coefficients were obtained: 0.81 for users satisfaction of e-governments service

quality; 0.78 for ease of use; 0.79 for reliability; 0.74 for perceived usefulness; 0.77 for citizen support; 0.78 for content

and appearance of information; 0.70 for trust; and 0.92 for total variables.

DATA ANALYSISOf the total 500 questionnaires distributed, 417 completed surveys were received (83% response rate). 396

questionnaires were fully completed which we used in this investigation. The results of descriptive analysis showed that

the majority of respondents (59.6%) were female. Also, the majority of respondents (79.2%) were graduates and the agerange of most of them (81.2%) was between 18 and 23 years.

STRUCTURAL EQUATIONS MODEL

In assessing the model using structural equations modeling, the two-stage approach presented by Anderson and Gerbing(1988) is followed. In this approach, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is used in the first stage to assess the

measurement model. In CFA the reliability and validity of measurement model are examined under Structural Equations

Model (SEM) principles. In the second stage, the models validity and fitness was assessed with attention to datastructures using SEM. In the present paper, using a two-stage approach, first the appropriateness of measurement modelis verified using structural equations analysis and in the second stage the proposed model is assessed by using structural

equations analysis and the proposed hypotheses are tested.

MEASUREMENT MODELS ESTIMATION

Measurement model is a model based on pre-empirical information on data structure which could be in the form of a

theory or hypothesis, a specific classification scheme for items or sub-tests in compliance with form and content concretefeatures, known empirical conditions or knowledge obtained from previous studies on extended data. Among various

methods for examination of internal structure of a set of indicators, CFA is the most useful method which estimates the

parameters and tests the hypotheses with attention to the number of underlying factors of relations between indicators(Hooman 2009).

In the present paper, a seven-factor model was tested for technology acceptance and customer satisfaction factors. Chi-

square overall fit indexes (2=726.08, df=326, p=.00, 2/df=2.22) show that the measurement model has a good and

acceptable fit. In addition to chi-square, several other indexes also are used to determine the good fit of research models

among which Goodness of Fit Index (GFI), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Tucker-Lewis-Index (TLI) and RootMean Square Error (RMSE) can be pointed out. The closer the GFI to one, the better fit will have the data pattern. Also,

TLI, Incremental Fit Index (IFI) and CFI are acceptable in ranges higher than 0.90 and indicate good fit of a model

(Medsker et al., 1994). As illustrated in Table 3, all are within acceptable range and these results indicate desirable fit ofproposed measurement model.

Also, statistically it is suggested that factors with a regression load (factor load) more than 0.5 are considered assignificant and acceptable (Klemperer, 1995). CFA results together with partial index p were examined to test the

acceptability of factor load of each item and the factor loads of all items were higher than 0.50 and partial p, lower than

0.05 so it may be concluded that the items assess observation variables appropriately. Thus, it may be generally stated

that all considered factors are confirmed and overall fit indicates the good fit of the study measurement model withobserved data.

Table 1. Confirmatory factor analysis of measurement model

DFCIMINPCIMIN/DFIFITLICFAGFIRMSEIndex

326726.080/002/220/9060/8890/9040/8820/056Measurement

Model

Reference: research results

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EXAMINING THE PROPOSED MODELS FIT

After ensuring the correctness of measurement model (using CFA) we proceed to examine the structural model. Results

showed that the proposed model had a desirable fit and the fit indexes also confirmed models fit. The chi-square value

(2=737.480, df=327, P=0/00) showed that the formulated models fit was satisfactory and acceptable. Other fit indexes

are shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Model fit indexes

Index Value Acceptable Range* Result

Partial Chi Square (CMIN/DF) 2.25 Between 1 to 5 AcceptableNormalized Fit Index (NFI) .838 Close to 1 AcceptableIncremental Fit Index (IFI) .903

0/9>Acceptable

Tucker-Lewis Index. (TLI) .8870/9>

Acceptable

Comparative Fit Index (CFI) .9020/9>

Acceptable

Parsimony Comparative Fit Index (PCFI) .7800/6>

Acceptable

Parsimony Normalized Fit Index (PNFI) .725 0/6> AcceptableRoot Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) .056

0/08

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