Factors influencing e-government services usage behaviour among Saudi Arabia’s SME employees

• Main Author: Mansour, Al Jerais Turki
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: T58.5-58.64 Information technology; HD60 Small Business.
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/10502/1/s94417_01.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/10502/2/s94417_02.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/10502/

Absher is an e-government platform that provides facilities and enhances e-services for citizens and agencies/businesses in Saudi Arabia. However, less usage of e-services provided by Absher amongst the SME employees is reported. There are no empirical studies to uncover the issue of the uses of e-government by employees of SMEs-Saudi Arabia. This work investigates the factors hindering the SMEs employees to perform their personal work tasks through Absher e-services. An integrated model was proposed based on the dominant theories; the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTUAT2) and Technology Readiness Index (TRI) by considering the context of the study. The proposed model encompasses insecurity, discomfort, optimism, social influence, facilitating condition, and habit as independent variables, behavioural intention as a mediating variable, gender, age, and ICT experience as moderating variables, and use behavior as dependent variable. Data were collected using structured questionnaires from a sample of 477 SME’s employees from different industries in Saudi Arabia. The analysis was conducted using Covarience-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) via AMOS to evaluate the relationships among the proposed factors and the use of behaviour of Absher services. The findings showed that insecurity and discomfort have a negative effect, while optimism, facilitating condition, social influence and habit positively affect the behavioural intentions for using e-government services by employees of SMEs-Saudi Arabia. The findings also showed no direct relationships between facilitating conditions and habits, and the use behaviours. Behavioural intention significantly mediates these relationships and all other relationships between the independent variables and the use of behaviour. Furthermore, gender significantly moderates the effect of discomfort, insecurity, optimism, and habit on the behavioural intentions for using e- government service by the staff of Saudi Arabia SMEs while age significantly moderates the effect of insecurity, social influence and habit on the behavioural intention. Also, ICT experience considerably moderates the influences of insecurity, discomfort, social influence, and habit on the behavioural intention. The model as an output from the findings of the study can help policy and decision makers to better tailor e-government services to the options and needs of SMEs’ employees leading to higher levels of usage.