Trust Dimensions
and the Adoption of
E-Government in Jordan
Emad Abu-Shanab, Yarmouk University, Jordan
Ameen Al-Azzam, Yarmouk University, Jordan
ABSTRACT
E-government project utilization depends on users adoption of the system, where trust is a crucial factor in
forcing the intentions to use such systems. This research utilized 105 usable responses from citizens who used
and explored e-government services. It was hypothesized that trust in e-government and trust in the Internet,
along with perceived risk, will significantly influence trust in E-government, and further intention to use
the system. Using path analysis, results supported trust in government and the Internet and did not support
perceived risk. Also, trust in e-government significantly influenced intention to use the system. Finally, path
analysis indicated a significant mediation of trust in E-government, where direct and indirect effects were
estimated. Conclusions and future work are stated at the end.
Keywords:
E-Government Adoption, Jordan, Path Analysis, Perceived Risk, Trust in Government, Trust
in Internet
1. INTRODUCTION
Trusting an e-government Website is a crucial
step towards the adoption of such paradigm.
It is important to build this cumulative trust in
e-government to facilitate and encourage the
interaction between government and their customers (citizens and business). E-government
can be defined as the use of information and
communication technology (ICT) and particularly the Internet to deliver information and
services by the government to its customers
(citizens and businesses). E-government gained
DOI: 10.4018/jicthd.2012010103
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40 International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012
2. BACKGROUND OF
E-GOVERNMENT
E-government is a discipline that comes
from many areas of research like information
technology, political science, public and business administration. Such issue influenced
the definition of e-government, where many
definitions where proposed based on the view
of the research domains they belong to. The
literature indicates some similarities and differences between e-government and e-commerce
field. Carter and Belanger (2004) argue that
both e-government and e-commerce depend
on the Internet technology in delivering their
services. Differences between e-government
and e-commerce are the following: citizens
interact with government in a much richer set
of different contexts and life episodes than with
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International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012 41
3. TRUST CONSTRUCT
Trust is a social connection by individuals to
surmount the complexity and uncertainty in
interacting with another party (Dashti, Benbasat, & Jones, 2010). Trust has been explored
extensively and defined differently in numerous
research studies. Trust is a highly complex,
multi-dimensional and context-specific phenomenon (Papadopoulou et al., 2010). According to Ridings, Gefen, and Arinze (2002)
the definition of trust in online environment is
complex because people dont meet in faceto-face setting.
The concept of trust discussed in many
areas like philosophy, psychology, sociology,
economics, and organizational theory (Chopra
& Wallace, 2002; Colesca, 2009b). Colesca
(2009b) proclaims that the existence of many
definitions for trust in the literature comes as
a result of two main reasons: first, trust is an
abstract concept, used instead of many concepts
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42 International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012
Knowledge-Based Trust
The confidence that desired behavior comes
from the experience and the direct interaction
with trustee (Dashti et al., 2010). According
to Wang (2010) knowledge-based trust comes
from the familiarity with other party and the
familiarity can build the trust between two parties through reducing the uncertainty.
Institution-Based Trust
According to Dashti et al. (2010) institutionbased trust means that citizens believes that
laws, rules and regulations will guarantee that
the government will behave as expected. Lean,
Zailani, Ramayah, and Fernando (2009) indicated that if citizens believe that the Internet
lacks the proper rules, laws and regulations, they
will not have high level of institution-based trust.
Based on the literature related to trust in the egovernment area, and the previous discussions,
a conceptual model is proposed based on three
factors: Trust in technology, Trust in government and Perceived risk. Figure 1 represents
the proposed trust model.
Calculative-Based Trust
Personality-Based Trust
This construct is based on the belief of the
other party, that is, the other party has specific
attributes (Wang, 2010) such as competency,
the belief that people assess whether the other
party has the skills, abilities, expertise to satisfy
their needs; integrity, the belief that the online
trader will behave in an honest way and will
adhere to principles and standards; benevolence,
people assess whether the vendor focuses on
making profit or on customers interest (Lean
et al., 2009).
Cognitive-Based Trust
Cognitive-based trust describes how people
build their trust based on the first impression
Trust in Internet
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International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012 43
Trust in Government
Trust in government is defined as the confidence
of citizens in their government (both politicians
and public officials) to do the right things and
act appropriately and honestly on behalf of the
public (Bannister & Connolly, 2011). Trust in
government leads to the success of e-government website (Teo et al., 2008). The authors
indicated that government-citizen relationship
plays a vital role in perceiving government
websites trustworthy. Colesca (2009a) argued
that trust in government is the ability of the
government to provide online services. Trust
in government is related to citizens expectation and knowledge of government (Cullen &
Reilly, 2007).
Trust in government appears from three
factors (Bannister & Connolly, 2011): first,
the characteristics of the individual (i.e., his
or her socialcultural background); second,
professional standards and public statements
of ethical standards (institutional trust); finally,
experience (process trust). Trust in e-filer, used
by Schaupp and Carter (2010), can be related
to trust in government as in Jordan, this filing process is done mainly for individuals by
government employees. Finally, adopting egovernment and using it might improve citizens
trust in the performance of the public agency,
but will not lead to greater trust in federal
government overall (Morgeson et al., 2010).
Perceived Risk
Perceived risk is defined as consumers psychological perception of risks in the process
of online shopping, the subjective forecast
about the likelihood and the seriousness of
loss (Wang, Wang, & Dong, 2010, p. 342).
Liu and Zhou (2010) indicated that there is
a strong relationship between trust and risk.
Many dimensions of perceived risk are men-
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44 International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012
5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This empirical study utilized a questionnaire that
consisted of two parts. Part one gathered general
information about respondents like: gender,
age, education, occupation, income per month,
and other usage related data. Part two asked the
respondents to answer 17 likert scale questions
to measure to what extent does citizens trust egovernment and how such trust in e-government
impact the intention to use the services of egovernment. The items of the instrument were
adapted from previous research (Karavasilis,
Zafiropoulos, & Vrana, 2010; Colesca, 2009a,
2009b; Belanger & Carter, 2008), and adjusted
to fit with the Jordanian environment. This
included an arbitration process utilizing 15
master students in an e-government graduate
course. A pilot test was conducted in order to
assess the questionnaires comprehension and
eliminate potential problems, so the preliminary
questionnaire was administered to a group of
master students at Yarmouk University.
The population of this study was defined
as Jordanian citizens with regular access to
Internet. A paper-based survey was distributed
to 150 citizens in Jordan, 120 surveys were collected, with 105 usable surveys. The sampling
process was done randomly within Yarmouk
University and on voluntary bases. Respondents were asked if they knew e-government
website and services, and then requested to fill
the survey. Mater students were the majority
of the sample (70.5%), employed respondents
were (37%). Table 1 shows the demographics
of the sample.
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International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012 45
Frequency
Male
52
49.5%
Female
53
50.5%
Total
105
100%
Education
Frequency
8.6%
Bachelor
74
70.5%
Master
17
16.2%
PhD
1%
Other
3.8%
Total
105
100%
Age
Frequency
18-25 years
62
59%
26-35 years
24
22,9%
36-45 years
14
13.3%
4.8%
Total
105
100%
Occupation
Frequency
Private sector
12
11.4%
Public sector
27
25.7%
Student
60
57.1%
Unemployed
4.8%
Retired
1%
Total
105
100%
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46 International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012
Std. Error
(Constant)
1.144
0.605
0.463
0.127
0.331
0.132
-0.052
0.107
Standardized
Coefficients
Sig.
1.891
0.061
3.638
0.000
0.258
2.500
0.014
-0.042
-0.489
0.626
0.377
Std. Error
(Constant)
0.949
0.482
0.419
0.102
0.377
0.106
-0.143
0.085
Standardized
Coefficients
Sig.
1.969
0.052
4.131
0.000
0.328
3.574
0.001
-0.130
-1.685
0.095
0.381
Table 4. Coefficient table where ITU is the dependent variable (single regression)
Unstandardized Coefficients
B
Std. Error
(Constant)
2.109
0.351
0.523
0.097
Standardized
Coefficients
0.468
Sig.
6.001
0.000
5.375
0.000
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International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012 47
Table 5. The direct and indirect effects of the predictors in the model
Path
TG Analysis
TG - TEG
0.381**
TEG - ITU
0.468**
Indirect effect
Direct effect
0.178*
TG - ITU
Path
TI Analysis
0.377**
Effect
TI - TEG
0.328**
TEG - ITU
0.468**
Indirect effect
Direct effect
Effect
0.154*
TI - ITU
0.258**
7. CONCLUSION
This research focused on the risk and trust
constructs related to adopting e-government
initiatives in Jordan. Results indicated a significant support of trust influence on ITU, which
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48 International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012
Result
H1
Supported
H2
Supported
H3
Not-Supported
H4
Supported
the distinction between risk and privacy and investigate the influence of each, more research is
needed to confirm results from previous research
related to privacy and risk (Ruizhong, Xiaoxue,
& Zixian, 2010; Rotchanakitumnuai, 2007;
Wang et al., 2010; Abu-Shanab et al., 2011).
Finally, the trust construct is a disputed one
as weve seen from the literature where many
studies defined trust in different manners, this
calls for more attention to this important factor.
Future research is recommended to explore
the reasons behind the insignificance of risk factors, and to validate the instrument with a larger
sample. Larger sample size is recommended to
improve the reliability of the instrument and
confirm the results.
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Copyright 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
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International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 4(1), 39-51, January-March 2012 51
Emad Abu-Shanab received his PhD in business administration, major in MIS area in 2005 from
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. He is an assistant professor at the MIS department in Yarmouk University, Jordan, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses.
He authored a book in arabic in the area of e-government, and published many journal and
conference papers. His publications and research interests are in areas such as e-government,
technology acceptance, e-learning, GDSS, ERP and strategic issues of information systems.
Ameen Al-Azzam is a master student in management information systems department at Yarmouk
University. He received his bachelor degree in management information systems, in 2006. His
research interests are technology acceptance and e-government.
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