The Role of Quality, Trust and Empowerment in Explaining Satisfaction with E-government Chatbots

With technological advancements within the field of AI there has been an increased interest in chatbots used as a tool in e-government services. Several Norwegian public organizations including the Welfare Services Organization, the Tax Authorities and several municipalities have implemented chatbots for government service delivery. Despite this increased interest in implementing chatbots for government service delivery, there is a knowledge gap in terms of what contributes to the satisfaction with e-government chatbots. To fill this gap, the purpose of this master thesis is to investigate factors affecting the satisfaction with e-government chatbots from a citizen perspective using elements from the updated IS Success Model by Delone and Mclean (2003). Factors focused on in this thesis are citizens’ trusting beliefs and perceived degree of empowerment when using e-government chatbots provided by Norwegian public organizations. The research question raised in this thesis was “How does the information, system and service quality of chatbots affect citizens’ empowerment and trusting beliefs when using e-government chatbots?”. To be able to answer our research question this thesis has sought to identify 1) to what extent citizens perceive the quality of e-government chatbots, 2) the level of empowerment citizens feel when using e-government chatbots, 3) how quality affects citizens’ empowerment and trusting beliefs when using e-government chatbots and 4) how quality, empowerment and trusting beliefs explain satisfaction with e-government chatbots. The methodology for this thesis is a mixed methods approach consisting of a survey with a questionnaire and follow-up interviews. The survey yielded a sample of 105 citizens or permanent residents of Norway that have used e-government chatbots. A number of 11 follow-up interviews were performed to complement findings from the survey. The survey data was analyzed with partial least square path modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS and the interviews were analyzed with the open coding technique. The findings indicate that information and service quality significantly influence citizens’ trusting beliefs when using e-government chatbots. Information, system and service quality significantly influence the degree of empowerment felt by the citizens’ when using e-government chatbots. The degree of trusting beliefs and empowerment positively affects the degree of satisfaction with e-government chatbots, while satisfaction positiv