User Acceptance of Intergovernmental Services: The Case of Electronic Document Management System

The traditional focus of intergovernmental services research has been on the technological development, not on user acceptance; yet intergovernmental services in each electronic government (e-Government) implementation affect the ultimate success of the e-Government project. In the e-Government implementation context, many governments have invested huge amounts of money to make intergovernmental services both available and user-accepted, although some individuals have no intention of using them. The electronic document management system (EDMS) is the most popular intergovernmental service in the e-Government project. Thus, e-Government researchers need to identify the factors that determine user acceptance of EDMS. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework, this study investigates the effect of a set of antecedent factors on the intention to accept EDMS. Collected from a sample of 186 users of real e-Government's EDMS in Taiwan, the results strongly support the utilization of TPB in predicting users' intention to accept EDMS. In addition, the findings indicate that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, training, compatibility, external influence, interpersonal influence, self- efficacy, and facilitating conditions are significant predictors of users' intention to utilize EDMS. Finally, implications for research and practice are discussed.