**6. Adoption of e-services**

The successfulness of any service depends on whether users start using it or not. This is widely referred to as adoption. Previous research has found several factors that affect the formulation of attitudes and behavior to innovations and leads to their adoption (Rogers, 2003). Relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, triability, communicability and perceived risk are attributes that are important here, they outperform even other types of adoption predictors like situational variables and user characteristics. Rogers (2003) argues that innovation attributes have explained 49 to 87 per cent of the variance in the rate of adoption of various innovations. In predicting adoption the focus has been in adoption of products the factors may be applied to adoption of services which are delivered electronically (de Ruyter et al. 2001). From the array of attributes are perceived risk and relative advantage most relevant in explaining adoption of e-services.

The perceived risk is particularly applicable and important to services as the perceived risk tends to be considerably higher than in case of products. In internet the risk is high because the customers do not know whether the service providing e-business is "big or small, new or established, legitimate or illegitimate" (Hagel & Singer, 1999). It is still noteworthy that organizational reputation has a strong influence on trust, attitude and behavior (de Ruyter et al. 2001). In internet trust plays a critical role because - depending on the service - users have to release personal or financial data to the e-service provider. This takes in an environment where the user may have very little information on the service, the e-service provider and their trustworthiness.

While using internet for users will look for innovations that provide an advantage over current services and products. It becomes operationalized in functionalities and properties as "time-saving", "range of options" and "ease of use" (de Ruyter et al., 2001). Also convenience is an important issue. For example, there is no need to go to a certain office at a given time, when there is an e-service for doing the task it can be accomplished whenever and wherever using a computer that can connect to the service through the internet. When the innovation provides relative advantage to the user it is seen as a trigger to use of the

Services for the Digital Citizen 159

which they are unprepared or even ill-equipped (Gil-García & Pardo, 2005). Successful development calls also for top management commitment, linkage to business, technical

It is very important to look at services from user's perspective – whether they are connected to e-business or public services. As long as there are citizens that do not use electronic services organizations must to provide same service electronically and as a traditional service – the result is increased costs instead of cost savings. If the service is based on existing departments, administrative procedures and processes it may not be able to provide added value to the user. There is a need to do things differently, cross boundaries and redesign processes when designing e-Services. Hence, the work of developing and

alignment, knowledgeable personnel and involvement of users (Pardo & Ho, 2004).

rebuilding government for the digital age is just beginning (Atkinson & Leigh, 2003).

visited also in the future (Shang et al., 2005).

**8. References** 

6-23.

pp.311-320.

pp.66-71.

The success of electronic services depends on whether users – digital citizens - find them valuable and start using them. In e-business solutions it has been found that sites need to be both easy to use and add value to the user, these are key attributes that increase the use of services (Igbaria et al. 1995; Lee & Turban, 2001; Lim et al. 2008). The added value lies in properties as "time-saving", "range of options" and "ease of use" (de Ruyter et al., 2001). The web sites should also provide enjoyable experiences, these kind of sites will probably be

Atkinson, R.D. & Leigh, A. (2003). Customer-oriented E-Government: Can We Ever Get

Ancarani, A. (2005). Towards quality e-service in the public sector: The evolution of web

Asgarkhani, M. (2005). The Effectiveness of e-Service in Local Government: A Case Study,

Blomqvist, K. (2002). *Partnering in the Dynamic Environment: The Role of Trust in Asymmetric Technology Partnership Formation*. Acta Universitatis Lappeenrantaensis 122. Cullen, R., 2001. Addressing the digital divide. *Online Information Review*, Vol. 25, No. 5,

Dawes, S.S. & Pardo, T.A. (2002). Building collaborative digital government systems, In:

Gil-García, J.R. & Pardo, T.A. (2005). E-government success factors: Mapping practical tools to theoretical foundations. *Government Information Quarterly* (22): pp. 187-216. Goldkuhl, G. & Persson, A. (2006). "From e-ladder to e-diamond – re-conceptualising

Gouscos, D., Lambrou, M., Mentzas, G. & Georgiadis, P. (2003). A Methodological Approach

Electronic Government, Second International Conference: pp. 173-176.

*human factors, and policy.* Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA. Dutta, A. & Roy, R. (2003). Anticipating Internet diffusion. *Communications of the ACM*, (2),

McIver, W.J. & Elmagarmid, A.K. (Eds.) *Advances in digital government. Technology,* 

models for public e-services", in *Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on* 

for Defining One-Stop e-Government Service Offerings. In: Proceedings of

sites in the local public service sector. *Managing Service Quality*, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.

There? *Journal of Political Marketing*, 2 (¾), pp. 159-181.

*Information Systems (ECIS2006)*, Göteborg.

*The Electronic Journal of e-Government*, Vol.3, No 4, pp.157-166.

innovation in question. In e-business relative advantage means that companies should offer better and preferably unique services to the customer if they want to distinguish themselves from other businesses (Tambini, 1999). The e–service must offer benefits over existing services and ways of doing things for attracting potential users and gaining "critical mass" behind the service.

Relative advantage plays a role in formation of attitudes and behavior towards e-services. Also organizational reputation has an important influence on users. It has a strong positive impact on the customers trust in, quality perception of, and intention to use the e-service (de Ruyter et al., 2001). As a result, the reputation of the services becomes an impediment for successful e-services.
