Revisiting the theory of planned behavior for the preparation of the adoption of municipal e-services in less developed countries

Abstract

The aim of this study is to design a model of the factors affecting the decision of municipal councils of less developed countries (LDCs) to commit resources in preparation of the adoption of e-services. The proposed model was designed by identifying key general e-government adoption factors using a systematic literature review, by modeling these factors according to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and by defining a set of hypotheses for the application of the proposed model to municipal e-services in LDCs. This led to the hypothesis according to which the decision of LDCs’ municipal councils to commit human resources and to engineer institutional arrangements in preparation of the adoption of e-services depends on: a) The ICT infrastructural capabilities of their municipalities. b) How these municipal councils intend to use e-government as a strategic tool towards the fulfillment of their mandate of improving the socio-politico and economic conditions of their municipal citizens. c) Their belief that they are being put under pressure to institute e-government as the tool of excellence or norm for the running of municipal affairs. Such pressure may come from their interaction with their citizens, from national and global challenges beyond their control, or from constraints inherent to their political ideology. The proposed model can be used for the engineering of decision support systems to help municipal councils make investment decisions in preparation of the adoption of e-government especially in the context of LDCs. Futhermore, its originality lies on its focus on factors affecting the preparatory stage of e-services adoption.