Understanding E-participation adoption: Exploring technological, organizational, and environmental factors

Digital technologies empower public sector organizations to collect information and knowledge from citizens and other stakeholders. E-participation is vital for local governments due to their proximity to citizens, fostering community engagement for economic and social development. Understanding factors influencing e-participation adoption is critical for strategy, planning, design and diffusion of e-participation initiatives which will ultimately motivate the citizens to use e-participation services. This article explores technological, organizational and environmental factors that influence the decision of local governments to adopt e-participation. The research involved 248 respondents, including administrative division and department heads from Croatian local governments. The study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess the relationship between TOE factors and e-participation adoption. The findings confirmed the significance and relationship of ICT infrastructure, top management support, human resource expertise, public pressure, and public readiness with e-participation adoption in local governments. Perceived benefits and the moderating effect of top management on ICT and e-participation adoption are found to be insignificant. In addition, an importance-performance map analysis is performed to further explore the performance of factors. Results are discussed as well as theoretical, and practical implications. Suggestions for decision and policymakers are given for the effective implementation of e-participation initiatives.