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7.2 Modelling Citizens’ Challenges towards m-Government Service Adoption
challenges to citizens’ adoption of m-government services in Tanzania; these are citizens’
lack of preparedness, mismatched service requirements and mismatched service provision- consumption focus. In section 5.4.3.5, findings reveal that Tanzanians, when making adoption decisions, consider their attitudes, subjective norms, the effect of technology and their financial position; these are factors that affect their cognitive and emotions towards the service. Edvardsson (2005) and Edvardsson, Tronvoll & Gruber (2010) note that experience has a significant impact on customers’ perception of service quality. Moreover, adoption is a function of citizen satisfaction achieved – if m-government service provision targets meet citizens’ expectations. However, any mismatch in the two perspectives leads to citizens’ lack of satisfaction, hence limited adoptability.
7. 2.1 Functional Satisfaction Vs Experiential Satisfaction
In the m-government service context in Tanzania, discussion on section 6.5 reveals a mismatch in what constitutes service quality between citizens and government organisations, resulting in mismatched service requirements. Similar to Edvardsson, Tronvoll & Gruber (2010), findings in section 6.2.2 indicate that government organisations are reliant on assumed citizen expectations when determining and defining service needs and requirements.
Similarly, Bakunzibake, Grönlund & Klein (2016) found a gap between citizens’ service expectations and service outcomes as a result of greater focus on technical aspects during implementation. Also, while functional factors only describe possibilities for achieving an online transaction, an m-government service consists of other requirements crucial for its fulfillment like security, aesthetic appeal, reliability and data integrity (Wanjau, Wangari &
Ayodo, 2012). Also, section 6.3.1 reveals that while functional achievement is necessary, meeting citizens' emotional and cognitive needs motivates new adoption and repeat use of m- government services. Thus, while citizens are concerned with the overall experience of consuming m-government services (experiential satisfaction), government organisations tend to focus on achieving technical functionalities (Functional Satisfaction) and assumed citizen expectations.
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According to Buckley (2003), an e-business focus aims at ensuring electronic transaction completion that is, achieving functional requirements of the service. Accordingly, the current m-government service provision perspective in Tanzania is centred on the e-business focus that prioritizes the achievement of service functionalities (technical aspects),that is, ensuring transaction success. However, the consumption perspective extracted from the findings in section 5.4.3.5 and the discussion in section 6.4 prioritizes experiential focus, whereby the experience that affects citizens’ cognitive and emotional aspects when engaging with the services defines their satisfaction. A user-experience or an experiential focus, although it is inextricably associated with the e-business focus, aims more towards influencing citizens' cognition and emotions towards the service (Luarn & Liu, 2003). Therefore, currently, there is a mismatch in perspective between m-government service provision and citizens' expectations. Consequently, citizens experience challenges, as identified in section 6.4, when attempting to adopt m-government services.
Figure 7.1 provides a visualisation of the m-government service adoption problem in Tanzania, showing the mismatched perspectives between service provision and consumption and how this influences citizens’ adoption decisions. The m-government service provision perspective in Tanzania is dominated by the e-business focus, which predominantly prioritizes the achievement of functional factors (Buckley, 2003; Luarn & Liu, 2003; Bertor, Estevez & Janowski, 2016). With this focus, the m-government service provision strategy in Tanzania currently only focuses on achieving functional or transactional factors. These are grouped into two categories, contextual factors and service characteristics, as noted in Figure 7.1. Contextual factors include infrastructure and the legal and regulatory frameworks upon which m-government services are provided, while service characteristics include all features related to service performance. The consumption perspective, on the other hand, constitutes the user-experience focus (experiential focus); as noted in Figure 7.1, experiential satisfaction arising from a positive citizens’ experience is regarded by citizens as a critical determinant for m-government service acceptance and use. Experiential focus entails prioritizing factor that affects citizens’ cognizance and emotions; this includes attitudes or user characteristics, past experience as well as citizen knowledge and skill level (Luarn &
Liu, 2003). Figure 7.1 indicates that currently in Tanzania, the m-government service provision does not match citizens’ expectations, consequently hindering citizens’ adoption of
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m-government services. Therefore, to enhance citizens’ adoption of m-government services in Tanzania, the service-provisioning focus needs revision in order to accommodate elements of citizens’ expectations, that is, to ensure functional, cognitive and emotional factors are optimally achieved.
Identifying challenges and conceptualizing the problem hindering citizens’ adoption of m- government services, as in Figure 7.1, provides a crucial stepping-stone towards solving the m-government service adoption problem, consequently enhancing its adoptability. However, knowing the problem is but one stage, the focus thus migrates towards how and on what basis the proposed solution to address the mismatch between m-government service provision focus and consumption expectation, identified in Figure 7.1, is formulated and justified. For m-government service adoption in Tanzania to be a reality, a strategy to mediate this hindrance has to ensure congruence of the two perspectives; most importantly the providers’ perspectives must accommodate and address factors critical to consumer satisfaction. The proposed strategy must ensure that service functionality factors, including usability and usefulness factors grounded within the e-business focus, are coupled with a user-experience focus that aims to achieve emotional and cognizance factors that trigger a positive users' experience in order to overcome these challenges. The following discussion captures the context in which the strategy towards enhancing citizens’ adoption of m- government services in Tanzania is proposed and modelled.
160 Figure 7.1: Limited m-Government Service Adoption-Problem Modeling
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7.3 Solution Modelling towards Citizens' Adoption of m-Government Services