Use intention and behavior in e-government among rural women: An extension of the UTAUT-2 model

The promotion of e-government is a vital initiative for enhancing public service delivery, improving administrative efficiency, and advancing the modernization of governance. However, the factors influencing rural women's intention and behavior in using e-government services remain insufficiently understood. This study extends the UTAUT-2 by incorporating perceived security and digital literacy as additional variables. A mixed-methods approach, combining structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural networks (ANN), was employed to identify the key determinants of rural women's intention to engage with e-government services. The results indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, perceived security, and digital literacy significantly affect rural women's intention to use e-government services. The extended UTAUT-2 model explains 78.6% of the variance in their behavioral intention. Furthermore, a strong positive relationship was found between e-government usage intention and actual behavior, with education level also showing a significant positive impact on e-government usage behavior.