The Use of the UTAUT Model in the Adoption of E government Services in Kuwait

 

AlAwadhi & Morris (2008) relied on UTAUT by surveying 880 university students to find out the factors that affect the adoption of E-government services in Kuwait. The results revealed that peer influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy played a major role in determining students’ behavioral intention. The researchers had also noticed that the facilitating conditions and behavioral intentions affected the students’ use of e-government services in Kuwait.

Introduction

The success of E-government initiatives is dependent not only government support, but also on citizens’ willingness to accept and
adopt those e-government services [10]. Government decision makers, therefore, need an understanding of the factors that would encourage use of electronic service delivery channels rather than more traditional service delivery methods.

Literature Review

A number of studies have investigated the adoption of e-government services in developed countries whereas relatively little has been undertaken in developing countries.

Carter and Belanger surveyed 140 students in the US to investigate factors that influence citizens’ adoption of e-government services. They adopted the DOI and examined what they thought were the most relevant constructs, namely, relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use and image, which affect the intention of citizens to use e-government services. The findings showed that higher levels of relative advantage, compatibility and image are significantly associated with an increased intention to adopt e-government services.

Another study, based on technology adoption theories, was undertaken by Hung, Chang and Yu who investigated the public’s acceptance of the online tax filing and payment system (OTFPS), an e-government service in Taiwan. Based on TPB, the researchers proposed a comprehensive model to elicit users’ salient attitudes towards e-government services using an e-mail questionnaire survey. The study found that perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived risk, trust, compatibility, external influence, interpersonal influence, self-efficacy and facilitating conditions were critical factors in the adoption of OTFPS.

Research Model

The comprehensiveness, validity and reliability of the UTAUT model have encouraged the authors of this study to adopt and validate it in the context of e-government adoption in a developing country. The model was amended to suit the context of the study. Performance expectancy was measured by the perceptions of using e-government services in terms of benefits, such as saving time, money and effort, facilitating communication with government, improving the quality of government services and by providing citizens with an equal basis on which to carry out their business with government. The amended model also considered the influence of the moderators that were thought would influence the four direct determinants: gender, Internet experience and type of academic course.

Methodology

Quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire survey was undertaken to meet the aim of the research. The study was limited to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Kuwait University. The questionnaire was administered to 1013 students taking scientific and humanities courses. It was designed to be short, unambiguous and easy for respondents to complete. Because the e-government project was not widely known in Kuwait, it also provided a definition of e-government. Respondents were instructed to indicate their perceptions of the amended UTAUT model, which included performance expectancy, effort expectancy, peer influence, facilitating conditions and behavioural intention to use e-government services, all elicited by using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “strongly disagree” through to 7 “strongly agree”. Consistent with other research, similar items were grouped together for higher reliability and validity of the model.

Data Analysis

About two thirds (69.8%) of respondents were female and one third (30.2%) male, with an average age of 20 years. The study attempted to explore any changes in respondents’ intentions through the “intention” question, which asked respondents whether they intended to use e-government services in the future: in “four weeks”, in “three months” or in the “future”. Thus, this made the behavioural intention construct a binary outcome variable.As there were two binary outcome variables (behavioural intention and use) the analysis was run separately for each. Logistic regression, using SPSS software, was utilised to facilitate the analysis, which investigated the relationship of predictor variables to
outcome variables.In the first phase of predicting respondents’ behavioural intention regarding their use of e-government services within the four weeks (following the survey), a logistic regression model was conducted.In the second phase of predicting respondents’ behavioural intentions with regard to their use of e-government services within three months following the survey, similar predictors and their interaction were tested. In the final phase of predicting respondents’ behavioural intentions with regard to their use of e-government services in the future, the model correctly predicted 65.2% of cases.

Conclusions

This study identifies the determinants of potential users’ adoption of e-government services in a developing country using an amended version of the UTAUT model. The findings revealed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, peer influence and facilitating conditions were significant in the adoption of e-government services in Kuwait. For an effective adoption of the services, widespread and attractive awareness campaigns should be conducted, targeting potential users properly to inform them about the real benefits they would gain from the use of these new types of services.

Authors

• Suha AlAwadhi
  Loughborough University
  Department of Information Science
• Anne Morris
  Loughborough University
  Department of Information Science

References:

– AlAwadhi, S. & Morris, A. 2008, ’The Use of the UTAUT Model in the Adoption of E government Services in Kuwait’, Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp.1-11.

The perceptions towards mobile services: An empirical analysis of the role of use facilitators

 

UTAUT was formulated in 2003, and since then the researchers tried to validate it and use it to explore information technology adoption. Recent work by Koivimaki et al. (2008) tried to apply UTAUT to study the intentions of 24 individuals in Finland against mobile technologies. The researchers found out that the mobile device usage time was not directly related to consumer perceptions, but the familiarity with the devices themselves as well as the user technical skills were the ones that mattered.

References:

– Koivimaki, T., Ristola, A., & Kesti, M. 2008,’The perceptions towards mobile services: An empirical analysis of the role of use facilitators’, Personal & Ubiquitous Computing, vol.12, no.1, pp.67-75.

UTAUT

The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is considered one of the latest and the most widely used models to analyze user acceptance and use of technology. It was formulated to unify the elements of eight common technology acceptance models: synthesized elements across eight well known technology acceptance models:

1. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) by (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)
2. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by (Davis, 1989)
3. Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by (Ajzen, 1991)
4. Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) by (Rogers, 1983)
5. Model of PC Utilization by (Thompson, Higgins, & Howell, 1991)
6. Motivational Model by (Davis et. al 1992)
7. the combined TAM and TPB (C-TAM-TPB) by (Taylor & Todd 1995)
8. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) by (Compeau & Higgins 1995)

 

As per Venkatesh et al. (2003), the theory consists of four main constructs: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. Those four constructs represent the independent variables which in turn directly affect two dependent variables: usage intention and usage behavior. In addition to the those six constructs, there are four moderators (Gender, age, experience, and voluntariness) which mediate the main four independent variables.