All Citizens are the Same, Aren’t They? – Developing an E-government User Typology
Abstract
Taking a closer look at current research on e-government diffusion shows that most studies or conceptual works deal with citizens as one broad mass that is not further described or divided into smaller subgroups. Such efforts are mainly limited to the digital divide discourse and distinguish at most between haves and have-nots or younger and older parts of the population. Understanding why and how citizens use public online services also requires an understanding of how different segments of the population react to IT in general as well as to e-government in particular. To date, no meaningful attempts to develop such an e-government user typology have been undertaken. Therefore, the study at hand aims at developing a user typology for the e-government context. To this end, we chose an explorative design and conducted a qualitative interview study in Germany in 2016 with 18 respondents from all age groups. We qualitatively analyzed the sample regarding usage behavior, variety of use, and e-government specific uses and perceptions. Our research reveals six user types differing in quality and quantity of use with regard to internet-based technologies in general and e-government services in particular. Understanding how different populations perceive e-government and contextualizing their behavior can help explaining why some citizens are making advanced use of e-government while others widely ignore these services.
Origin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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