Abstract

What is the theoretical rationale that e-government evaluation should employ? Witnessing the changes in society and the public sector, an adaptation is proposed, to evaluate trust building as the goal of e-government, rather than looking for the best predictors of e-government adoption. Organisations that provide online services are concerned about the evaluation of service quality, user satisfaction, and the ultimate goal of the system – value creation. Considering trust as a major value that organisations wish to achieve, the impact of service quality on trust building is at the focus of this study: What are the system features that constitute trust in the organisation? To what extent would each feature explain trust building? In the context of e-government that serves the wide public it is of particular significance to scrutinize the nature of the relationships between the user and the system. Therefore, an adaptation is proposed, to evaluate trust building as the goal of system usage rather than its predictor, in a formative model. This theoretical rationale alters the conventional relationships between well-studied measures of service quality. In a modified version of ESQUAL, the service measures were turned into indicators of trust. The findings (n=395) support the viability of the model; the extent to which the user puts trust in the organisation depends on how trustworthy the system is. In addition, the findings support the conceptualization of richer measures of system usage as stronger indicators. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications are discussed.

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