Assessing citizens' non-adoption of public e-services in Germany

Abstract

The amount of acceptance literature stands in sharp contrast to the persistently low adoption rates of public e-services in most European countries. Despite huge investments on the one hand and a vast body of literature on success factors on the other hand, citizens are surprisingly uninterested in the use of public e-services. However, only few studies explicitly address phenomena of resistance or non-adoption. In order to explain citizens’ non-adoption and adoption of public e-services, this article builds on the Inhibitor Theory as an analytical framework, based on which a dual factor-model is proposed and tested with survey data from 495 German citizens. The results of this study indicate that non-adoption of public e-services is less driven by technical issues than suggested in current literature. Instead, the need for personal consultation and status quo bias are the strongest predictors of citizens’ non-adoption.