The Behavioral Factors Towards Implementing E-Government Services : Through the Lens of the Government Employees

Electronic government is a relatively new domain in the study of public administration. Government employees have an essential function in the process of government operation; they can be regarded as the principal medium of communication between the service provider (government) and the end-users (citizens). In analyzing people’s behavioral factors towards the adoption of e-services, most previous studies targeted the adult population, while those on the government employees are minimal. This study was designed specially to understand the government employees’ behavioral factors on their intentions towards the adaption and the adoption of the e-government services. A set of semi-structured interview questions was developed based on the prior literature on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and e-government studies, and ten in-depth interviews were conducted in Macao SAR. In addition to the analysis of the three primary constructs of TPB, the factor of Trust , some enablers and hindrances were identified. Significant findings were yielded while investigating how the government employees themselves perceived the e-services and how they believed the citizens’ perception of this issue. This kind of contextualization helped policymakers look at this issue from different perspectives and design some feasible interventions according to group alignment strategies