Citizens’ intention to use and recommend e-participation: Drawing upon UTAUT and citizen empowerment

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how citizens’ perception of empowerment can influence the intention to use and intention to recommend e-participation. Design/methodology/approach: A research model is evaluated using structural equation modelling. An online survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 210 users of e-participation. Findings: The results show that psychological empowerment influences the intention to use and recommend e-participation. Performance expectancy and facilitating conditions were the strongest predictors of intention to use; effort expectancy and social influence had no significant effect on the prediction of intention to use e-participation. Research limitations/implications: The use of psychological empowerment as a higher-order multidimensional construct is still insufficiently researched. Future research may explore the effect of each dimension of psychological empowerment in different scenarios of e-participation adoption. Caution is needed when generalising our findings towards the adoption of e-participation in different locations or with different participants. Practical implications: The findings can help the local governments to design strategies for the promotion and diffusion of e-participation amongst the citizenry. Those strategies should focus on citizens’ perception of empowerment, thereby creating a positive attitude towards intention to use and recommend e-participation. Originality/value: An innovative research model integrates the unified theory of acceptance, use of technology and psychological empowerment; the last as a higher-order construct.