The Interplay between E-Government Service Adoption Preferences and E-Government Service Delivery in Germany

Due to the rapid developments in information technologies, e-government has gained increasing attention lately, both by practitioners and researchers. However, research so far widely neglects the interplay of e-government service adoption preferences and government's delivery. Moreover, research on e-service delivery channels has just started. To address these gaps, we investigated two research questions using Germany as an example. (1) To what extent does the current level of e-services delivered match citizens' preferences? (2) To what extent do current e-service delivery channels match citizens' preferences? Following an exploratory research approach, we surveyed 956 citizens in six German cities. Furthermore we reviewed these cities' e-service deliveries. Our findings indicate no significant correlation between e-service adoption and delivery. Rather, we observed a large gap between citizens' level of digital preferences and cities' level of digitalization. In respect to delivery channels, cities' supply matches citizens' preferences for classic online channels but not for multi-channel.