Urban E-Government Initiatives and Environmental Decision Performance in Korea Joon Hyoung Lim Korea Institute of Public Administration Shui-Yan Tang University of Southern California ABSTRACT Although e-government initiatives have been credited as engines of government reform, empirical evidence is insufficient to determine their effects on public sector performance. To explore the impact of e-government on local governance, this article examines how e-government initiatives influence the perceived performance of environmental decision mak- ing in an urban context and what organizational and contextual factors affect Web-aided decision performance. Data were collected from the content analysis of city government Web sites and a nationwide survey of city officials in Korea. Findings from path analysis show that (1) in- formation technology leadership of senior management and Web site quality are key to decision intelligence, quality, and speed and (2) e-government Web divide, a gap in the capability of city Web sites to support public service delivery and democratic interaction, translates into disparities in environmental decision performance across cities. Additionally, environmental activism is a significant factor shaping the impact of e-government on environmental decision making. E-government initiatives contribute to local governance performance, but their impacts vary, depending on Web site quality and the entrepreneurial leadership of public managers. INTRODUCTION E-government initiatives embracing new Web technologies as tools for public service delivery and democratic participation have become a key component of public sector reform worldwide. The Bush Administration, for example, enacted the E-government Act in 2002 and announced E-government initiatives as a crucial part of the President’s Management Agenda. Launched in 2003, the Office of E-Government has since orches- trated e-government efforts across agencies, emphasizing the Federal Enterprise Architec- ture and e-government performance management (Office of Management and Budget 2003). Considering information technology (IT) as a core element of the ‘‘Modernizing Government’’ initiative, the UK government also launched ‘‘Directgov’’ in 2005, a new We thank Carolyn Heinrich and three anonymous reviewers for useful comments on previous versions of this article. Address correspondence to the author at stang@usc.edu. doi:10.1093/jopart/mum005 Advance Access publication on March 30, 2007 ª The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org JPART 18:109–138