The rapid development of information technologies and data technologies provides good opportunities for governments to optimize public service delivery. The significance of digitalization of public service has been increasingly recognized (Lindgren et al., 2019). Governments worldwide have made effort to digitalize public service (2018, UN E-Government Survey). However, can the adoption of new technologies for public service delivery always bring about positive effects? When governments adopt new technologies to provide public services, effectiveness and citizen satisfaction are expected higher. What if the delivery of digitalized services is not experienced as successful or satisfied as expected, how will it influence citizens’ attitudes towards governments? The present research sets out to examine this question.
Previous research has studied how citizens’ experience with digitalized public services influences citizen satisfaction with and citizen trust in governments (Kim, Park, Rho, 2019; Alawneh, Al-Refai, & Batiha, 2013). Nevertheless, the relationship between digitalized public services and citizen satisfaction and trust is less straightforward. Some research indicates a positive relationship (Welch et al., 2013), while others does not (Morgeson lll, VanAmburg, Mithas, 2011). On the other hand, some research has showed citizen dissatisfaction with government websites (Welch et al., 2005), and suggested that an unsuccessful citizen experience with the government online communication channels could backfire in terms of trust in governments (Hong, 2013). This suggests that the (un)successful experience of digitalized public services might be an important factor that influences the effect of digitalized public service on government-public relationships.
By integrating big data, artificial intelligence and other new technologies, China has fast developed various digitalized service channels such as government application, government applet of WeChat, government Tik Tok (CNNIC, 2019). In spite of the widespread applied range and growing popularity of such channels, public's overall experience is not always improved correspondingly (Reddick, & Zheng, 2017). Previous research has suggested that fast implementation of digitalized public service is less important than satisfying citizens’ needs (Kim et al., 2019). In this research, we aim to examine how digitalized public service influences government-public relationships especially when user experience is unsuccessful.
We use a 2 * 2 mixed experimental design to examine two factors, namely if new technologies are adopted for public service delivery (yes vs. no) and how is user experience of public service delivery (successful vs. unsuccessful). In total, four conditions are formed: a public service is delivered with or without new technologies and user experience is successful or unsuccessful. The dependent variables include citizen trust in government agencies and citizen satisfaction with governments. It is expected that user experience of public service delivery moderates the effect of digitalized public service on citizen trust and citizen satisfaction. Specifically, citizen trust in and citizen satisfaction with governments are higher when new technologies are adopted for public service delivery; however, this effect might be smaller or even reversed when user experience is unsuccessful.
