Electronic Service Delivery in the Public Sector: Understanding the Variance of Citizens' Resistance

After the private sector the public sector also tries to benefit from the advantages of electronic service delivery, in particular from lower costs and higher accessibility. While more and more services are available electronically, citizens' usage rates lag behind. The e-government research community identified this issue and increasingly analyzes the demand side: Researchers investigated the acceptance of existing electronic services (e.g. implemented taxpaying systems) or means to reach "more resistant" groups of society by electronic services, e.g. citizens without internet access. Besides more resistant users, which are harder to convince of electronic services, there might be more demanding types of services. Such services are, from the perspective of almost all users, less amenable for electronic delivery than other (i.e. not demanding) services. This study employs qualitative research methods in a case study design and identifies three main (service related) determinants that cause citizens to prefer traditional, i.e. physical and personal contact, over impersonal "virtual" contact.