Evidence suggests that citizens outside larger urban centers are less prone to use the various functionalities of e-government, while they are the most likely to benefit from these services. Few studies have been performed to understand rural citizens' attitudes. Our purpose was to identify factors that influence the use of e-government services in outlying regions in the Province of Quebec (Canada). Our study was based on a subset of attitude-related variables that were shown to be strong predictors in prior research. We performed a survey involving 1587 citizens living in four selected outlying regions of Quebec, and held two focus groups with users and non-users of e-government. Our results confirm that attitude is influenced by perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use, perceived risk and trust and that attitude is strongly related to the intention to use e-government services. These results may help to plan more effective strategies to increase use in non-urban areas.

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E-government offers the potential to provide easy and flexible access to a vast array of government services, particularly in outlying regions where traditional service centers are scarce and costly. However, past research shows that online services use decreases in non-urban areas. The objective of this chapter is to identify factors that influence the use of e-government services in outlying regions. In the delivery of any government services, there are two parties: citizens and the government. Hence, in order to better identify these factors, we conducted our study from two points of view: the citizens’ and the government’s managers. These results show that attitude positively affects intention to use e-government services. From the citizens’ perspective, attitude is in turn influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, and trust. From the managers’ perspective, several social, economic, demographic, and psychological factors should be considered for the development of online services.

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