Examining the antecedents and outcomes of smart government usage: An integrated model

Smart government is viewed as the highest modernization stage of public agencies. Governments seek to employ disruptive technologies to substantially transform government-citizen relationships, enhance citizens’ experiences, transform public decision making, emphasize citizen engagement in the democratic decision-making process, provide more agile and resilient government structures, create substantial public value and generally improve quality of life. Despite its numerous potential advantages, smart government is still in its early phases of development. Examining issues related to the usage behavior of smart government services has received little attention. Outcomes of the usage of online technologies in general, and electronic public services in particular, have been largely overlooked. Accordingly, this study aims at developing and empirically validating an integrated model of smart government usage by extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) through the incorporation of a set of determinants and outcomes of smart government usage following an extensive review of extant literature. The data were obtained from 414 smart government clients in the United Arab Emirates through an online questionnaire and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of this study indicated that, among all significant antecedents of smart government usage, performance expectancy has the strongest impact, whilst facilitating conditions has the weakest influence. It has been also reported that personalization has no significant effect on smart government usage. The results further revealed that the strongest impact of smart government usage is on information transparency. Implications for theory and practice are also offered.