Motivational Factors Impacting the Use of Citizen Reporting Applications in Saudi Arabia: The Case of Balagh Application

Abstract

Citizen reporting applications are considered a new approach for interaction between government authorities and citizens. Citizen reporting applications are implemented to collectively gather information from citizens on issues related to public interest such as accidents, traffic violations, and commercial frauds. Through utilizing citizen reporting applications, citizens are able to provide information about incidents efficiently and conveniently to the local authorities via mobile applications that are designed for these specific purposes. For such applications to be successful, citizens' willingness to participate continually and to become daily users of these applications is required. This paper applies the selfdetermination theory to investigate the factors that encourage citizens to participate in citizen reporting applications. In this study, the factors impacting behavioural intention to use the applications are divided into two categories. First, intrinsic motivation factors that include self-concern, social responsibility, and revenge. Second, extrinsic motivation factors that include output quality and rewards. The study empirically surveyed 297 Saudi citizens from different age groups. The partial least square (PLS) approach validates the research model. Findings reveal that output quality, revenge, and self-concern are significantly associated with citizens' motivations to use the applications, whereas rewards and social responsibility do not significantly influence citizens' motivations to engage with such applications. This study contributes theoretically by enriching literature on the identification of the factors behind user's engagement in citizen reporting applications. It also contributes practically by supporting the developers of citizen reporting applications to consider these factors when designing and marketing this kind of application.

Why do Women Volunteer More than Men? Gender and its Role in Voluntary Citizen Reporting Applications Usage and Adoption

“…Citizens are more likely to participate in government citizen reporting applications if the system's expected output quality is high. In other studies by Winkler, et al [56] and , Alhammad, et al [9] they find that output quality takes on greater importance than any other variables related to extrinsic motivation. In light of the aforementioned, we derive the following hypothesis.…”

“…On the other hand, individuals' extrinsic motivations, such as recognition and rewards, are what actually drive long-term engagement. However, by reviewing other relevant studies in the field [8,9,28], one can indicate that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational categories are to varying degrees, responsible for human behaviour.…”

“…Psychological research found that a higher level of intrinsic motivation leads to users' inclination to dedicate more time to perform the task due to the selfsatisfaction feeling they experience while performing the behaviour [21]. However, both types of motivations have been verified in the literature to be a strong incentive for users to participate in crowdsourcing projects and open government initiatives [8,9,27,35]. Hence, this leads to the following hypotheses: H1: Intrinsic motivation will positively impact users' behavioural intention to use citizen reporting applications.…”

“…On the other hand, when self-concern is the main motive for using the platform, self-concern can be raised by setting higher aspirations [45]. In addition, several other studies [1,9,46,47] found that self-concern is a significant predictor of citizens' participation in crowdsourcing projects, which include citizen reporting applications. Drawing on these studies, we hypothesis the following: H5: Self-concern will positively impact users' intrinsic motivation towards using citizen reporting applications.…”

“…Although the study found these factors to be significant, the validity of their findings is limited to the context of reporting issues and damages related to the infrastructure in Zurich, which cannot be generalized to other contexts. Alhammad, et al [9] studies the motivational factors behind citizens' engagement in citizen reporting applications to report commercial incidents. They found that self-concern, revenge, and output quality play significant roles in users' engagement.…”