Behavioural intention on e-government adoption among the Malaysian baby boomers: the moderating effect of technology readiness / Nicholas Marcus

E-government was launched by the Malaysian government to bring the country into the age of information communication and technology (ICT) with a vision of developing internal government operations. With e-government services, citizens would be able to exploit internet technology to improve convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with the government. Business processes can be streamlined and information can be handled successfully within the government, thus enhancing the speed and consistency of policy formulation, planning and compliance. However, just like any other nations, Malaysia has not completely reaped the benefits of this innovation. This thesis attempts to explain the problem from the perspective of behavioural intention. Scholars have empirically shown that behavioural intent is the most practical indicator to behavioural use. This thesis aims, first, to discover the current state of Malaysian Baby Boomers behavioural intention to adopt e-government services. Second, to investigate factors influencing Malaysian Baby Boomers behavioural intention to adopt e-government services. Finally, to examine the Malaysian baby boomers’ Technology Readiness moderating effect on this relationship. The main contribution of this study is the moderating effect of technology readiness on the relationship between performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, trust, and behavioural intention. Technology readiness is the state of mind to embrace and use new technologies either for accomplishing goals at home or work. The literature review revealed that no studies had ever been undertaken on this gap particularly in the context of Malaysian citizens, let alone on the Baby Boomers cohort of generation. This study employed the theory of UTAUT. Respondents in this thesis are the cohort of Malaysian baby boomers born between 1946 and 1965. This research adopted the surveyed-based quantitative approach, which involves 210 respondents from all over Malaysia with 70% response rate from the sample size of 300. The findings revealed that Malaysian e-government adoption is still at the infancy level with low level adoption, even though from the perspective of Malaysian baby boomers, they have strong intention to adopt e-government services. And the most important thing, technology readiness has no moderation effect. Of the five independent variables (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and trust); however, only performance expectancy and facilitating condition were significant. This thesis contributed to the literature in the field of e-government services. Practically, the result of this thesis enables stakeholders and decision-makers to carefully devise strategies and action plans to accelerate the uptake of e-government services in Malaysia, especially under the present situation where the Malaysian Government is emphasising more on digitalising government service to curb the spread of the global pandemic of COVID-19.