Innovation Characteristics Influencing Veterans' Adoption of E-Government Services

Abstract

Many authors have used the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory of Rogers (1995) to study factors affecting citizen e-Gov adoption. But none of these authors studied the moderating role of the digital divide on the relationship between innovation characteristics and veterans' intention to adopt e-Gov. Our research model postulates that a veteran's intention to adopt e-Gov services is determined by the interaction between the digital divide and five innovation characteristics: relative advantage, perceived compatibility, perceived complexity, subjective norms and perceived risk. Data was collected from 183 veterans in a US state where a government website is designed to deliver e-services to veterans. We found that the digital divide did not moderate the effect of relative advantage and subjective norms on the veteran decision to adopt e-Gov services. However, the digital divide moderates the effect of some factors: perceived compatibility, perceived complexity and perceived risk. Discussion and implications are provided.