Citizens' satisfaction with e-government services: The case of Uşak province

Developments in technology affect every area from politics to economy, from social life to administration. One of the biggest innovations brought by this process of change is the introduction of public services over electronic platforms. The COVID-19 epidemic, which affected the whole world after March 2020, has increased the importance of e-government services. The COVID-19 epidemic accelerated the use of e-government services in parallel with the measures to maintain social distance in many countries and turned voluntary use into compulsory use. This enabled citizens who were distant from e-government services before the epidemic to access public services online and reduced the need to go to public institutions physically. In this context, the aim of this study is to draw the conceptual framework of e-government, to measure and analyze citizens' use of e-government services and their satisfaction with these services during the COVID-19 epidemic by associating them with their demographic and socio-economic characteristics. For this purpose, a scale was developed that measures the factors affecting the satisfaction of citizens from e-government services. After the pilot test, a field study was conducted with a questionnaire form on 396 citizens living in 13 neighborhoods in Uşak and selected by simple random sampling method. Reliability, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), correlation, regression and descriptive statistical analyzes of the data processed in the SPSS-26 program were performed. It was determined that the 19-item scale consisted of a structure with four sub-dimensions (factors) and these factors explained approximately 70.028% of the total variance. The factors were named as e-government capacity, efficiency, privacy and security, and trust in government, respectively. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine whether the factors significantly predicted satisfaction with e-government services. The model was found to be significant according to the results of the regression analysis. (F=57.592; p=.00). When the R2 value was examined, it was found that e-government capacity, efficiency, privacy and security, and trust in government explained 37% of satisfaction with e-government services. Keywords: E-government, Citizen, Satisfaction, E-government services, Uşak, Information Communication Technologies