icegov2012 proceedings

E-Participation in the Era of Web 2.0: Factors Affecting
Citizens’ Active E-Participation in Local Governance
Jooho Lee
University of Nebraska at Omaha
6001 Dodge Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68182
1-402-554-2756
jooholee@unomaha.edu
ABSTRACT
The study develops a model of active e-participation and tests it in
the context of local governance. By building on and extending the
existing literature on citizen participation, technology acceptance
model and social networks, the study asserts that citizens’
perceptions of the intrinsic and instrumental value of participation,
and the strength of their social networks are associated with their
active e-participation. Using the 2009 E-Participation Survey data
collected from Seoul Metropolitan Government, we found that eparticipants
actively use e-participation when they perceive a
greater intrinsic value of e-participation. By further analyzing
Male and Female models separately, we also found that male eparticipants
who perceive greater instrumental value of eparticipation
are likely to use e-participation actively. The
findings, however, indicate that women who perceived a greater
intrinsic value of e-participation and are embedded in weaker
offline social networks are likely to actively use e-participation.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.4.3
General Terms
Management, Human Factors
Keywords:
E-Participation, TAM, Intrinsic and Instrumental Motivation,
Social Networks
1. INTRODUCTION
Recently, government embraces Web 2.0 – various networked
applications as a platform for user-generated information and
collaboration on the Web [1] – to facilitate various forms of
electronic participation (e-participation) such as online policy
forums. E-participation is broadly defined as web-based
applications enabling government to provide information and
support “top-down” engagement, and/or to foster “ground-up”
efforts to empower citizens in order to gain their support [2]. In
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 -­‐ 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA
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44
Soonhee Kim
Syracuse University
306 Eggers Hall
Syracuse, New York 13244
1-315-443-1282
soonheekim@maxwell.syr.edu
this research, we focus on a “ground-up” approach to eparticipation.
A growing body of literature has touted eparticipation
as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation
in the policy making process. The literature, however, has left
significant gaps in our understanding of the motivational and
social factors affecting citizens’ active use of new technology in
the context of citizen participation. Considering that eparticipation
using Web 2.0 is primarily driven by citizens, not
government, the potential of e-participation is problematic when it
is not actively used by citizens. To fill some of these gaps, this
study explores how citizens’ active use of e-participation is
facilitated by their perceptions of intrinsic and instrumental values
of e-participation and strength of social networks where citizens
are embedded in an offline setting.
To test research hypotheses, the study uses the 2009 E-
Participation Survey data collected from the members of Cheon
Man Sang Sang Oasis (hereafter Oasis), which is an eparticipation
program run by Seoul Metropolitan Government
(SMG) in South Korea since 2006. As a form of online policy
forum, the Oasis has served as an e-participation tool for citizens
to participate in policy making, especially the policy agenda
setting process [3]. Using Oasis, citizens view, submit and share
their ideas and suggestions on SMG policies associated with
community and governance issues. Specifically, the Oasis is
equipped with Web 2.0 functions to offer well-organized and
systematic services including participants-led creation of their
policy inputs on proposed SMG policies and collaboration with
other participants to share their policy inputs and feedback.
2. MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
From the citizens’ perspective, this study focuses on two types of
citizen participation values. The intrinsic value of citizen
participation has been supported because it is an essential means
of building and sustaining democratic systems by enabling
citizens to be more educated, developed, and informed [4].
Advocates of the instrumental value have highlighted that citizen
participation serves as a means of affecting and monitoring
government bureaucracy, which enhances citizens’ control over
administrative process and, in turn, promotes a sense of ownership
and empowerment [4, 5].
The second stream of research reviewed for the development of
study model is the technology acceptance model (TAM). The
essence of TAM is that individuals adopt IT applications when
they perceive usefulness and ease of use of the IT applications [6].
TAM has been widely extended by embracing new constructs
such as trust (see Venkatesh et al [7] for review) in diverse
research context [8].