Channel choice and the digital divide in e-government: the case of Egypt

Citizen Relationship Management System Users’ Contact Channel Choices: Digital Approach or Call Approach?

“…Governments have developed a multitude of contact channels at their disposal for interaction with the people, and citizens are able to have multiple contact choices based upon the situation they face and the mix of experiences that they have had. Public service consumers would develop multi-channel behaviors when they experience a dynamic environment or are exposed to the digital environment [25,31,32]. Some of these studies emphasize greater actual use and the purpose for citizens' e-government contacts.…”

“…Hence, individuals' frequent use of online public services would accumulate digital technology richness in other digital public services. Also, an individual's digital technology user behavior in one ICT would duplicate this behavior mode to other types of ICTs, especially when a new ICT is just adopted [25,46]. When a digital service, such as a 311 system with both a traditional calling approach and a digital approach, is adopted, at the beginning individuals are more likely to choose the digital approach because their digital public service use experiences decrease their uncertainty to new digital approaches and tell them the digital approach is associated with convenience, accessibility, and the richness of their previous online service use.…”

“…Schellong and Mans [20] asserted that citizens prefer to choose the contact channel with an integrated government service because they consider the decrease in cost relative to information, communication, and transaction. For the latest study of contact channel choices between traditional and electronic contact channels, Reddick, Abdelsalam, and Elkadi [25] examined the case of Egypt and found that the digital access divide and socio-demographic digital divide both have a strong relationship to contact channel choices.…”

Browse or Brush? An Exploration of Citizen-Government Interaction in the Municipal Realm

“…Third and relatedly, we do not only investigate digital citizengovernment communication, but also consider the effect of citizens' experience in communication via offline and traditional channels (face-to-face, mail, phone) on digital channel choice. Finally, whereas numerous studies on channel choices have focused on one particular country case for conducting research [20,22,23], to our knowledge, there is no research investigating citizens' channel usage in Austria. We take up this point and focus on an Austrian local government citizens communicate with.…”

“…Electronic government refers to a new form of government's delivery of information and services to the public, business, and public administration electronically [9]. A great number of studies has investigated citizens' participation in e-government, and which factors determine their choice to use technology for contacting government instead of or in addition to offline channels, e.g., [20,22,23]. Taking the rise of digital technology in the public sector into account, we intend to go one step beyond and itemize online communication by distinguishing between citizen communication via web page and mobile application with their local government.…”