Customer empowerment: Does it influence electronic government success? A citizen-centric perspective Haitham Alshibly a , Raymond Chiong b,⇑ a Amman University College for Financial & Administrative Sciences, Al Balqa Applied University, Jordan b School of Design, Communication and Information Technology, The University of Newcastle, Australia article info Article history: Received 10 September 2014 Received in revised form 22 March 2015 Accepted 11 May 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Electronic government success Customer empowerment Personalization Net benefit Trust abstract Electronic government (or e-government) initiatives are widespread across the globe. The increasing interest in e-government raises the issue of how governments can increase citizen adoption and usage of their online services. In this study, the fundamental argument is that citizens can be viewed as cus- tomers, and that e-government success can be measured by the extent to which customer net benefits are positively influenced. Hence, the key consequents of e-government success are customer-related, and the antecedents of such success have to be considered from the customer viewpoint. We advocate that government agencies must consider their customers’ perceptions of empowerment as a key causal mechanism in deriving value from e-government systems. However, the literature appears to lack this perspective. This study aims to fill the gap by proposing a theoretical model and an associated evaluation tool that measures the e-government performance from a customer empowerment perspective. The model was validated by a survey method and analyzed using partial least squares. The results support our argument and show that all paths in the proposed model are significant. Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Information and communication technologies (ICT) have revo- lutionized the processes, operations and structures of public sec- tors in both developed and developing countries (Alshibly and Al-Dmour 2011; Rana et al. 2015). The application of ICT to govern- ment is considered a cost-effective solution that improves commu- nication between government agencies and their constituents by providing access to information and services online (Vragov and Kumar 2013). Most government services are now established elec- tronically, ranging from license registration and renewal, tax filing and payment to online voting. As a result, governments in different countries have implemented beneficial electronic government (e-government in short) initiatives, and others are following suit to enable their citizens to access services and information through the Internet (Karkin and Janssen 2014). Generally speaking, three types of e-government systems and services exist: Government to Government (G2G), Government to Citizen (G2C), and Government to Business (G2B). Government forms and services, public policy information, employment and business opportunities, voting, tax return, license registration or renewal, fine payments and so on fall under the category of G2C services (Wang and Liao 2008). There has been a recent shift of focus on creating a more citizen-centric e-government platform (Karkin and Janssen 2014), which provides services in line with citizens’ needs and offers greater accessibility. However, this endeavor can- not be guaranteed until e-government initiatives are embraced and utilized by citizens (Alshibly and Al-Dmour 2011). Consequently, citizens’ e-governance needs have become one of the primary con- cerns of government decision makers. Successful implementation of e-government depends on the ability to develop services that match the goals and requirements of citizens and stakeholders. However, limited previous research studies have investigated e-government success from a citizen-based perspective (Scott et al. 2009). Specifically, citizens’ needs or perceived net benefits have not been adequately accounted for, leaving a clearly evident gap between design and reality in e-government service provision (Al-Haddad et al. 2011). To this end, the concept of ‘‘customer’’ (i.e., citizen) empow- erment is imperative for understanding how citizens value the ser- vices they use and what features of e-government systems and services influence their perceptions (Alshibly et al. 2015). Customer empowerment can be defined as a positive subjective state evoked by the feeling of increased control over the produc- tion of desired outcomes and the prevention of undesired out- comes relative to existing or previous systems (Hunter and Garnefeld 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2015.05.003 1567-4223/Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 49217367. E-mail address: Raymond.Chiong@newcastle.edu.au (R. Chiong). Electronic Commerce Research and Applications xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electronic Commerce Research and Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecra Please cite this article in press as: Alshibly, H., Chiong, R. Customer empowerment: Does it influence electronic government success? A citizen-centric per- spective. Electron. Comm. Res. Appl. (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2015.05.003