Using social media to increase e-government adoption in developing countries

Abstract

E-government can be a useful tool for governments to improve relationships with their citizens. However, citizen trust in government and the Internet technology is necessary for broad adoption of e-government. Using a survey, this study examines the trust level of digital natives in Nepal in their government and the Internet technology in general. The trust level in government comprises both relational trust and institutional trust and the relational trust is subdivided into three aspects: competency, benevolence, and integrity. This study also investigates respondents Internet and social media usage behavior and their likelihood to adopt e-government if social media is used in government-citizen communication. Results show that respondents have a low level of competence and benevolence trust in Nepalese government whereas their level of integrity and institutional trust in government was extremely low. Although respondents generally used the Internet and social media more than four hours a day, most have not used or seldom used egovernment websites. Respondents' positive attitude towards government's presence on social networking websites provides an excellent opportunity for Nepalese government to harness the potential of social media. To supplement the views of digital natives, two business website owners and two government officials in Nepal were also interviewed. Interviewees were positive of the benefits the Nepalese government could gain by being presence on social media, especially in terms of promoting transparency. Some also suggested that Nepalese government needs to consider developing e-government applications in local language.

Use of Social Media in Citizen-Centric Electronic Government Services

“…The bidirectional communication between government and citizens using social media channels makes the overall process trustworthy and can even lead to improved citizen participation. In order to get the optimal response from the citizens, the governments should make sure that the information shared is precise, effective and targeted to the right audience to fetch the optimal response from it (Shah and Lim, 2011).…”

“…Shah and Lim, 2011) has also revealed that government's ineffective communication with citizens, lead to low levels of trust in the government. Hence, effective and targeted communication (preferably through social media) is considered essential to build citizens' awareness, knowledge, perceptions and trust towards e-government services (Shah and Lim, 2011). 'Trust' and 'security' (see Table 6) are also among some of the most frequently used research themes explored across e-government and social media literature.…”

“…Porumbescu (2016) found that the use of public sector social media accounts is positively related to satisfaction and perceptions of public sector trustworthiness. Shah and Lim (2011) believed that successful e-government adoption requires citizens to have high level of trust in both government and Internet. The authors suggested enhancing transparency on the government websites to gain citizens' trust.…”

A review on antecedents of citizen's trust in government social media services

“…E-government is the employment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by government to provide services to citizens, business partners and different government offices [1]. The goal of e-government is to enrich government online services and their quality of interactions with citizens and businesses partners through good quality services and systems.…”

“…However, the efforts of governments and the potential value of government social media services cannot be displayed without addressing citizens willingness and their trust to participate in these services [4,8]. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship of trust between people and government [1,12]. Bélanger and Carter [13] identified trust as a significant predictor of citizen's intention to use an e-government service.…”