Title: Beyond utility: unpacking the enjoyment gap in e-government service use

Authors: Dapeng Liu; Meijun Wu; Hongyan Sun; Michael Ho

Addresses: Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76706, USA ' Department of Accounting, Shandong Management University, Jinan, Shandong 250357, China ' School of Accounting, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050067, China ' Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76706, USA

Abstract: E-government serves as a vital channel for citizen interactions with the public sector, where user enjoyment is of paramount importance. To date, few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of citizen enjoyment in e-government. To address this research gap, we administered a survey and gathered data from 363 Australian residents using myGov for tax filing. Our analysis revealed a pronounced discrepancy between reported enjoyment and the intention to continue using the services. Although users demonstrated a strong intent to use e-government services, this intent did not uniformly align with enjoyment. Additionally, informed by self-determination theory, we developed and tested an e-government service enjoyment model to study the impacts of effort expectancy, technophilia, technology humanness, and engagement in fostering user enjoyment. Unexpectedly, the results showed that information privacy concerns, commonly seen as a deterrent in e-government adoption, did not significantly affect enjoyment. Our findings advance the discourse on e-government service improvement.

Keywords: enjoyment; digital government; self-determination theory; technology humanness; e-government.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2024.142395

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2024 Vol.16 No.3, pp.334 - 353

Received: 12 Mar 2024
Accepted: 06 Jul 2024
Published online: 29 Oct 2024 *