International Business Research; Vol. 10, No. 1; 2017 ISSN 1913-9004 E-ISSN 1913-9012 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 42 E-government Adoption in Developing Countries: Need of Customer-centric Approach: A Case of Pakistan Fahad Asmi 1 , Rongting Zhou 2 , Liu Lu 1 1 School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China 2 Department of Science and Technology Communication and Policy, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China Correspondence: Fahad Asmi, School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China. E-mail: fasmie@mail.ustc.edu.cn Received: October 30, 2016 Accepted: November 28, 2016 Online Published: December 2, 2016 doi:10.5539/ibr.v10n1p42 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ibr.v10n1p42 Abstract The e-government implementation in developing countries is always less successful and objectively hard to achieve and the reason behind is a less citizen-centric approach. Therefore, the effect of trust and social influence will be studied while understanding the adoption behavior of citizens in developing countries. Specifically, a case of selected e-service (e-filling of taxation by ‘Federal Board of Revenue' (FBR)) will be studied in Pakistan. The sole purpose of the study is to pull the external factors like trust and social influence to increase e-government adoption in the massively populated region of the world. The quantitative approach will be followed where the current users of selected e-service will be inquired under the modified version of a generic framework of ‘Technology Adoption Model' (TAM). The sample size of 153 is filtered and analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling (SPSS AMOS) to study the intentions of the citizens. In methodological terms, deductive, quantitative method is adopted in interpretive philosophical manner. Collectively, trust and social influence are studied in order to find the impact on the intentions of citizens in the developing countries. However, the trust is the strongest predictor after social influence is recorded. Similarly, the usefulness observed to be a strong predictor of intentions in comparison of ease of use in the current scenario. Keywords: e-government, e-service, trust, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social influence, Pakistan 1. Introduction Electronic government (hereafter e-government) as a multi-disciplinary research area is under the limelight since past two decades. Interestingly, most of the existing academic and applied research in this field can be mapped on the continuum of technological and social prospects. However, both the optimistic and pessimistic approach is adopted during the research in order to elaborate the observable realities. Philosophically, the purpose of e-government is to provide the ‘Information Communication technologies’ (ICT) ba sed support to make the efficient interaction and the better delivery of service for the citizens, business and governing bodies (Basu, 2004; Heeks, 2001). From the design point of view, e-government is the citizen centric approach to provide government service, as it increases the citizen’s participation and visibility (Nam, 2014; Thompson et al., 2005). Apart from the less bureaucratic approach, the strengthening attributes for e-government includes the enriched availability of information for better decision making (Heintze & Bretschneider, 2000), one-window service offering for citizens (Azad & Faraj, 2008), reduction in the operational cost (Bhatnagar, 2002), technologically redefined quality of service (Sá et al., 2016), seamless connection among stakeholders, and the transparency and accountability in the governing system (Azeez et al., 2012; Babovi & Jovi, 2007). The intention to adopt any IT-based intervention in the traditional governing and administrative systems is to generate new value for the citizens and for potential business. For example, by the fusion of existing general (informational) and transactional (service) e-government, the participation of the citizens can help in formulating policy and making decisions (Nam, 2014; Thompson et al., 2005). Critically, the success rate of adoption of e-government is variated across the globe. In developed regions, around 25% e-government projects never touched the growing phase of its life cycle, and 33% failed to get mature as per the scope designed in the beginning of the project (Chen, 2006; Heeks, 2002b). Moreover, in the case of developing countries, the successful implementation and