Does e-government performance actually boost citizen use? Evidence from European countries

For many years, it was believed that higher-performing e-government features would boost citizen use of e-services. However, this straightforward proposition had never been tested. Using a survey of over 28,000 citizens across 32 European countries, we examined the effect of e-government performance on citizen use. Theoretically, a better-designed and maintained government website should be used more, but it was reject by multilevel model estimates. We found that performance was negatively related to citizen use of e-information and e-services, while e-participation use was insignificant. The implications of our findings on future efforts to increase the uptake of e-government are also discussed.