The surprisingly low effect of national culture on e-government adoption: A cross-cultural comparison

Governments worldwide are looking for ways to encourage the citizen uptake of online public services. Although some countries are doing better than the others, the vast majority of governments face adoption problems with their electronic services. Other than supply-side barriers, some nations show strong public resistance to government offerings. Drawing on cross-cultural research in IS adoption and diffusion, we posit that differences among adoption behaviors of nations may be attributed to cultural differences. Indeed, national culture shapes the core values and beliefs of individuals, which in turn influence attitudes and behaviors. As being an emerging field of IS, cross-cultural issues in e-government have not received much empirical attention to date. By using nationwide representative samples, we compared two European nations with different cultural profiles and e-government take-up levels. Surprisingly, the results indicate that Germany and Sweden do not differ substantially in their perceptions of enablers and barriers to e-government adoption.