A user-centric evaluation of e-government services in the GCC region: Case of state of Qatar

Abstract

Evaluating users' satisfaction of e-Government services has been addressed by numerous studies. These mainly looked at e-Government users as citizens who are nationals and comply with the local culture of the governments providing these services. However, the GCC region has a particular culture stemming from the social structure and working environment. The expatriate population from different backgrounds form a significant portion of e-Government users. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore users' satisfaction towards the electronic services provided by governments in the GCC region represented by the State of Qatar. In order to examine the suitability of the e-Government service portal, a cross-sectional survey targeting the users of three common e-Government services in Qatar evaluated users' satisfaction based on the four dimensions of the COBRA framework (Osman et al. 2014): Cost, opportunity, benefit and risk. SEM analysis demonstrated a good model fit and supported the hypotheses related to the effect of risk and benefit on users' satisfaction.