How do personality traits influence Open Government Data (OGD) adoption and usage? Investigating the indirect and moderating effects

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) research has focused for a long on the adoption and usage from the perspectives of users across different contexts. The underlying rationale for this specific focus is that OGD initiatives are undertaken to further citizen engagement with OGD for value generation and innovation purposes. Conceding that usage propensity is different across individuals, it is important to understand the influence of personality traits vis-à-vis OGD adoption and usage. Given that OGD has been regarded as a sophisticated “technology” and the role of personality traits has been considered as important in the adoption and usage of “technologies” in general, therefore, the present study contributes to the extant OGD-focused literature from a novel dimension. The study invokes the adapted model of the Unified Theory of Technology Adoption and Use (UTAUT) alongside the HEXACO-100 inventory constructs for studying the relationships between the constructs with a sample of 530 respondents. The results demonstrate that higher user Openness to Experience contributes to their higher Effort and Performance Expectancy; exposure to Social Influence; an increased level of Trust; and a more positive perception of Facilitating Conditions and Information Quality. Agreeable people are more likely to voluntarily use OGD. An individual's conscientiousness improves their perception of factors related to OGD quality. Excessive emotionality leads to a more critical perception of systems and information quality issues. Our findings also attest to the moderating impact of Honesty-Humility across Information Quality-Behavioral Intention positively; Extraversion across Information Quality-Behavioral Intention negatively and Extraversion across Trust-Behavioral Intention positively. Honesty turns out to be important for considering Information Quality vis-à-vis OGD adoption and usage but whilst extroverts are concerned about Information Quality, i.e. flawless information retrieval via OGD sources, Introverts are concerned about OGD trustworthiness, i.e. credible OGD for its adoption and usage and Extroverts find the OGD reliable and credible. With pointers for further research across the personality traits-OGD adoption and usage theme, the study closes with practitioner implications.