Theory Workshop

On April 9, 2021, the International Laboratory of Digital Transformation in Public Administration, together with British scientists from the University of Bradford Professor V. Virakkodi, S. Sivaraja and Professor V. Vikantesh, held a Theory Workshop on the interaction of citizens and public digital platforms.

In the study of interactions between citizens and public digital platforms, it is important to pay attention to the public demand-side prospective and the factors that influence it. To understand how the interaction between the user and the platform is constructed, contemporary scholars use the idea that the use of technology is related firstly to the inducement to use it, and secondly to the experience of using it, and thirdly to the subsequent reaction to that use.

There are a large number of basic approaches to the study of digital adoption and use. The following are just a few of them. The basic theory exploring this side of public digital platforms implementation was the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which was based on the analysis of two parameters - attitudes towards the use of the respective technology and subjective norms. Later, TRA was supplemented by two factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), and the attitude to use factor was excluded and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was developed based on it.

An alternative theory is represented by the Motivational Model (MM), which examines the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the use of technology. Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) includes eight different parameters that reflect the User Experience: e.g. advantage over other platforms, ease of use, external perception, etc. Social-cognitive theory (SCT) used a cognitive approach: expectations, affects, etc. when using technology. This theory, however, has not been widely applied. The Theory of planned behavior (TPB) revised the TRA approach and added to it the findings of later theories that included user experience.

The use of a large number of different models meant that research on the use and deployment of digital platforms was not comparable. Therefore, a Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) was proposed, which combined the parameters used in other theories:

• Performance Expectancy;
• Effort Expectancy;
• Social influence;
• Facilitating Conditions;
• Gender;
• Age;
• Experience;
• Voluntariness of Use.

The theory has been repeatedly tested by empirical studies and is effective.  UTAUT is currently able to explain 70% of variations in user behavior. Further prospects for the theory development are to find such factors that will broaden the understanding of user behavior within digital platforms.

Venkatesh and co-authors in 2016 complemented UTAUT with the Anxiety parameter, which captures users' emotions about using digital technology: risks related to security, privacy, safety.

The use of the above parameters made it possible to show how different factors influence individual experiences and practices of technology use. As shown below, it is related to different factors affecting different social groups.

Empirical studies conducted under the UTAUT methodology involve samples of at least 300 respondents on whom different factors are tested using specially designed questionnaires. The methodology will be further developed by refining the different parameters and their impact on different social groups.