Factors impacting the low usage of e-services in Latvia

Abstract

Despite the availability and technological flexibility of many pubic e-services in Latvia provided by both public and private organizations, users do not choose to use those services as frequently as their developers might wish. There are several possible causes for that: (1) e-services eventually do not meet users’ needs, (2) users have socio-cognitive barriers discouraging them from using e-services. These barriers can be related to technological problems (such as data security) or cognitive factors (such as fear of making mistakes in virtual environments lacking direct human interaction). The aim of the current research was to find out, which e-services users prefer and why, on the contrary, they do not choose to use some e-services. Further we wanted to explore what are the possible factors impacting this behaviour. To answer those questions, a large-scale representative (n = 1005) survey was used to collect data on how users perceive the information that is gained from various digital sources and what are their habits and choices of using information and communication technologies (ICT). The results of the research indicate some core habits of using ICT in e-service environments, reasons of the reluctance regarding the usage of e-services, and provide some clues for facilitating the usage of e-services. Our results indicate that the reason of hesitation to use e-services is data security and inconvenient and complicated interface system. In our study, we also discuss the differences between the general use of the internet and the use of e-services.