Users Acceptance of E-Government System in Sintok, Malaysia: Applying the UTAUT Model

E-government services have become a vital tool to provide citizens with more accessible, accurate and high-quality services and information. E-government system provides an efficient dissemination of information to people and eases people to communicate directly with government services. The utilization of ICT through e-government enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in the public sector. The system is regarded as one of the vital elements to be a developed country. The application of e-government indicates the readiness and ability of the nation utilizing technology within public administration periscope. Although the Malaysian government has introduced e-government for many years, its acceptance still not very high. Therefore, this paper studies the key factors of Malaysian citizens’ in Sintok, Kedah, a semirural area on approval on e-government services based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and the Use of Technology (UTAUT Model). The survey data was collected from 83% respondents to measure people understanding and awareness toward e-government system. The results show that there is an excellent understanding among Malaysian towards e-government system.


Introduction
In today's complex world,

Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) has become an essential element in our daily lives as it has affected and changed our lives to some extent. initiatives and fosters the knowledge society. Most of the countries around the world have adopted e-government in their government system because they realized the benefits of e-government in developing their countries. E-government helps to improve the information flows and processes within government, increase accountability and transparency, less corruption, and greater convenience increased citizen involvement, greater efficiency, and cost reduction for government and user (Noor, Kasimin, Aman, & Sahari, 2011).
However, the success of e-government system not solely depends on government support, but also the willingness of citizens to accept, use and adopt e-government services (DeLone & Mclean, 2003). Many researched has been conducted to study the adoption and success of e-government services around the world, and the results show many governments still suffering from low-level citizen adoption of e-government services (Bélanger & Carter, 2008;Gupta, Dasgupta, & Gupta, 2008;Kumar, Mukerji, Butt, & Persaud, 2007;Reddick, 2005;Thomas & Streib, 2003). Due to this concern, the government must take proactive actions in hopes to cater to the low usage of e-government services among the citizens as the government has spent much money to develop and implement e-government system. This research has been conducted to investigate and assess the factors that contribute to citizens' acceptance in using e-government services in Sintok, Malaysia.

E-Government
E-government has been defined in many different ways from various studies, for example, (Brown & Brudney, 2001) define e-government as the use of technology to increase access to and expeditiously deliver government information and services. They categorize e-government efforts into three broad types of Government-to-Government (G2G), Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and Government-to-Business (G2B). Muir & Oppenheim (2002) define e-government as one of the government initiatives in transmitting information via the internet or digital methods. Kumar et al. (2007) also define e-government as a medium for better service delivery to citizens, businesses, and community members through a change in the way the government manages the information.
The fully utilized e-government will contribute many benefits to government management and can bridge the interaction gap between government and citizens, for example, it will indirectly involve citizens in making a decision or policy (Othman, Yasin, & Samelan, 2012).
E-government targets to simplify bureaucratic procedures, increasing efficiency and transparency, improving information, and increasing the level of citizen empowerment. Due to the advantages gained through the (MAICSA) in 2017. He is also a social entrepreneur, and currently dedicates study in the area of Public Governance, Business Management, Psychology and Islamic Thought. application of the e-government, the UN and the World Bank embraced e-government as a strategic instrument (Cloete, 2007). Simultaneously, it will improve information flow and processes within the government, improve the speed and quality of policy development, and improve coordination and enforcement (Suki & Ramayah, 2010)"type":"article-journal","vol ume":"5"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/ documents/?uuid=b52bfeda-fd56-4b93-9ff4-da3f0c919ac6","http://www.mendeley.com/ documents/?uuid=09fc1147-cc36-4428-97b6-f8 88fc06f651"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation ":" (Suki & Ramayah, 2010. E-government aims to allow governments, businesses and citizens to work together to support Malaysia and all its people. It aims to deliver services to the people of Malaysia and become more responsive to the needs of its citizens. It also helps to enhance the relationship and quality of interaction between the Government of Malaysia and its citizens. Information System (eSILA).

Technology (UTAUT Model)
Information technology acceptance and adoption research has developed several competing and complementary models, each with a different set of acceptance determinants. These models developed over the years and came as a result of ongoing attempts to validate and expand the models. Most notable amongst these models are the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) , Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985)Heider, 1958Lewin, 1951, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM2) (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000), Diffusion of Innovation Model (DOI) (Rogers, 2003), and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) .
UTAUT is one of the most popular frameworks in the field of general technology acceptance models (Alraja, 2015)Like earlier acceptance and adoption models, it aims to explain user intentions to use an Information System (IS) and further the usage behaviour.    (Igbaria, Parasuraman, & Baroudi, 1996), the Model of PC Utilization (MPCU) (Thompson, Higgins, & Howell, 1991), DOI and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) (Compeau, Higgins, & Huff, 1999). Each model attempts to predict and explain user behaviour using a variety of independent variables. The UTAUT model was created based on the conceptual and empirical similarities across these eight models. Comparing UTAUT and previous models, UTAUT was able to explain 70% of technology acceptance behaviour, a considerable improvement on previous models, which routinely explain only over 40% of acceptance . Therefore, UTAUT is considered an enhanced model with parsimonious and robust characteristics that could better explain the factors influencing an individual's intention and usage of IT. In detail, UTAUT contains four core determinants, namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. The variable gender, age, experience and voluntariness of use moderate the critical relationships in the model . However, concerning this research, these four intermediate variables will be not used and tested. Alawadhi & Morri (2008) investigated the adoption of e-government services using UTAUT, and the survey was carried out on 880 students revealed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and peer influence determine students' behavioural intention. Similarly facilitating conditions and behavioural purposes determine students' use of e-government services.

Performance Expectancy (PE)
Performance expectancy is user beliefs that by using the system will assist him or she improve in job performance .
Another definition is performance expectancy can be regarded as a belief that the use of a particular technology will be advantageous or performanceenhancing to the individual (Muhammad Abubakar & Hartini, 2013). Wu, Yu, & Weng (2012) define performance expectancy as in which individual perceives that an information system is helpful for the job. From the definitions given, it can be seen that performance expectancy is a concern with making an individual task or job more effective and efficient. In the case of this research, it means that citizens feel and believe that by using e-government services will help them to gain more benefit and achieve a reasonable job expectation.
Performance expectancy in the UTAUT model is derived from a combination of five constructs from previous models, consisting of perceived usefulness, external motivation, job fit, relative's advantages and outcome expectations (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989;Venkatesh & Davis, 2000;. First, a construct is perceived usefulness,  where a person believes that using the system in his job will allow him to accomplish tasks faster. It also enhances his job performance, increases his productivity, increases efficiency at work and makes it easier to perform the job and find the system useful in the job. The second construct is the extrinsic motivation (Davis et al., 1989) a perceptions that users will want to perform an activity because it is perceived to be instrumental in achieving valued outcomes that are distinct from the activity itself, such as improved job performance, pay, or promotions.

Users Acceptance of E-Government System in Sintok, Malaysia: Applying the UTAUT Model 70
The third construct is job-fit, (Thompson et al., 1991) explains how the capabilities of a system enhance an individual's job performance, for example, using the system can decrease the time needed to complete the job and using the system can significantly increase the quality of output on the job. The fourth construct is a relative advantage, (Moore & Benbasat, 1991) a degree in which the use of innovation is considered to be better than in its predecessor, for instance, the use of the system increases job efficiency, makes the work more relaxed and makes the work more effective. The last construct is outcome expectations (Compeau et al., 1999) where the users expect that by using the system it will

Effort Expectancy (EE)
Effort expectancy can be defined as the degree of ease associated with the use of the system. According to Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; effort expectancy is the extent of convenience perceived for using the system. Based on this research, it means that citizen feels using e-government services is much more comfortable and easy to access. Similar constructs in other previous models and theories from semantic viewpoints are perceived ease of use, complexity and ease of use (IDT). First, Perceived ease of use determines where users assume that it will be free of effort to use the system. For example, it was easy to learn to operate the system and users find it easy to manipulate the system to do what they want and the interaction with the system is simple, understandable and easy to use. The second construct is complexity (Thompson et al., 1991) where the system is perceived as relatively difficult to understand and use, for example, using the system takes too much time, working with the system is so complicated. It takes too long to learn how to use the system. The last construct in effort expectancy is the ease of use (Moore & Benbasat, 1991) the degree to which using innovation is perceived as being easy to use.
Overall, effort expectancy variable is also considered as the vital determinant in the UTAUT model because an individual expects the technology introduced should be free of effort. Therefore, when technology is perceived to require less effort to use, then the tendency to accept and use the technology would be increase.
It is due to the perception that the lesser effort it takes to use the system technology the more useful the technology Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Such same effect is predicted to be on the e-government where free of effort would improve as well as attract the citizens to use the e-government services. Hence, it is proposed that effort expectancy could have resulted in a positive relationship with citizens' acceptance of the implementation of e-government services.  (Ajzen, 1991;Davis et al., 1989) subjective norms, where the individual perceives that most people vital to them, will affect their behaviour to act. For instance, people who control their actions believe they should use the system or people who are important to them think they should apply the system. The second construct is social factors (Thompson et al., 1991) where people use the system because of other friends or co-workers also use the structure, and the organization has supported the use of the system. The last construct in this variable is the image (Moore & Benbasat, 1991) the degree to which use of the system is perceived to enhance one's appearance or status in one's social network. For example, people in the organization or community who use the system have more prestige than those who do not, people in the organization or community who use the system have a high profile and having the system is a status symbol in my organization or community.
Overall, social influence is the degree to which the users perceived that important people for them believe that he should use the new system. The scholars found that social impact depicts a low positive relationship in the UTAUT model, and social influence constructs are not significant. Under a mandatory condition, this element of social influence seems to be substantial only on early-stage and turn to be non-

Facilitating Conditions (FC)
Facilitating conditions is the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support the use of the system. According Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; facilitating conditions refers to the extent to which an individual perceives that technical and organizational infrastructure required to use the intended system is available. This definition covers constructs of perceived behavioural control, facilitating conditions and adaptability. First, the construct is perceived behavioural control (Ajzen, 1991;Taylor & Todd, 1995) where it reflects perceptions of internal and external constraints on behaviour and encompasses self-efficacy, resources facilitating conditions, and technology enabling conditions. For example, users have the necessary resources to use the system and have the required knowledge to use the system.
Second is facilitating conditions (Thompson et al., 1991) where the guidance was available for users in the selection of the system, specialized instruction concerning the course was open to users, and a specific person or group is available for assistance with the system difficulties. The last construct is compatibility, (Moore & Benbasat, 1991) the degree to which the system is perceived as being consistent with existing values, needs, and experience of users. For example, using the system is compatible with all aspects of users' work and using the design fits well with the way users like to work.

Dependent Variable -Individual Acceptance
Individual acceptance is referring to how the users react with the services provided. It shows the overall satisfaction that users have before and after using the services provided. One of the most important things that indicate the acceptance of the people is the sustainability of service provider (Faezipoura & Ferreiraa, 2013). Sustainability is the time frame that service providers manage to survive in the industry. The time frame is measured as it will show that the people are accepting the service provider. One of them is the acknowledgement of the future needs of the people (Dey, Hariharan, & Brookes, 2006).
As people's needs continue to evolve, technologies are required that can cope with the various changes in the demand of the people.
Besides, people's acceptance is also calculated from the service quality perspectives produced by service providers. Service quality has many definitions. Crosby (1979) stated that service quality is conformance to requirement.
It means that a stated service is said as having quality when all of the dimensions of the services adhered to specifications set. Services are not something that can be seen. It is something that must be experienced. Because of that, the quality of services is difficult to be measured. The nature of services which is intangible lead to the measurement of the quality through customers' satisfaction as one of the indicators to show the service quality (Falk, Berkman, Mann, Harrison, & Lieberman, 2010). Customer satisfaction is met when service firms manage to achieve both customer needs and expectations. The service is born due to the demand from the customers.
When the demand is satisfied with the fulfilment of the customers' expectation, it will lead to customers' satisfaction.
Quality service is essential to ensure customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction will indicate the acceptance of the services whereby it can only be shown by the loyalty of the customers (Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, 1996). For example, the implementation of e-services to meet consumer needs is intended to satisfy customers.
Also, e-services ensure better knowledge transfer and flexibility transaction process that can be done at anytime and anywhere. Collier & Bienstock (2006) whereby they stated that e-services are one of the ways to ease the transaction process and affects customers' satisfaction in using the services provided. They further explain that the purpose of the e-services development is also to ensure customers loyalty and retention.
The proposed conceptual framework for this study is presented in Figure 2. The variables are mostly derived from the UTAUT model. First, performance expectancy, it is the degree to which the individuals expect that using the system will help them improve in their job performance .
Furthermore, the anticipated performance may also be considered as the expectation that the use of a specific technology would be beneficial or enhance individual performance. In this research, performance expectancy will be measured by the perceptions of using e-government services in terms of accomplishments, such as saving time, money and effort, facilitating communication with government, improving the quality of government services, and by providing citizens with an equal basis on which to carry out their business with the government. Second, effort expectancy is the extent of convenience perceived for using the system Venkatesh & Davis, 2000;. In other words, it is associated with the ease of use when using the system. In this research, effort expectancy will be measured by the perceptions easiness and convenience, such as learning and using the e-government services is straightforward, easy to become skilful at using the services, and able to get government services quickly. Third, social influence is the degree to which peers influence the behaviour of individuals, whether to use the system or not. According to (Curtis & Payne, 2008) social influence includes consideration of the person's perception of the opinion of others. Individuals expect that any person that important or closed to them think that they should use the e-government services. In this research, this variable will be measured by the perceptions of how peers affect citizens' use of e-government services and the encouragement from the government to use the services.
Facilitating conditions is the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to assist the use of the system . In other words, this variable associated with the availability of resources to support individuals in using the system. In this research, facilitating conditions will be measured by the perceptions of being able to access required resources, as well as to obtain knowledge and the necessary support to use e-government services. Citizens' acceptance is referring to how the citizens react with the services ensure customers loyalty and retention.

Conceptual Framework
Source: Adopted from The UTAU Model framework  with some modification

Conceptual Framework
Source: Adopted from The UTAU Model framework  with some modification provided. Some considerations are considered in determining the level of acceptance of people in the usage of e-government services. One of them is the regularity of the citizens in getting the services. If the citizens frequently use e-government services, it shows that they are willing to accept the system.
Besides, the acceptance is also based on the overall satisfaction felt by the citizens from the services they get. Citizens' desire to get services again in the future is another measure showing the extent of acceptance. When they accept to use the e-government services, they voluntarily want to use that service to perform any government requests.

Methods
The primary data collection method is adopted in this research. It used the original data collected through survey questionnaires. people. According to (Krejcie & Morgan, 1970) in determining size population, if the sample size is 420, the sample size is around 201. For this study, systematic sampling is selected as the technique of the sampling. Systematic sampling is samples that are chosen systematically or regularly. The questionnaire will be used as a medium for data collection. This study will be cross-sectional by using a survey questionnaire to study the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable at a given period.
The items of the questionnaire were adapted from the UTAUT model by  . Collected data will be tested using SPSS Version 22. Descriptive analysis will be conducted to assess the general background of respondents, and Pearson Correlation will be run to measure the strength of a linear association between two variables. Lastly, the normality test has been conducted for all variables, and it was accepted. The result of the reliability test has been presented, and all variables are valid and accepted.

Descriptive Analysis
Descriptive analysis study has been carried to investigate the background of participants and their level of knowledge in an internet application.  Source: Data processed from the SPSS software and globalization era, only 3% and 1.8% of respondents do have poor computer knowledge and internet knowledge accordingly.
Least of them use the internet for less than one year and less than 1 hour, which are around 2.4% and 7.2% accordingly. However, almost all respondents stated that they are using the internet for more than three years, 85.6% and more than 3 hours, 60.8%. Finally, from the data above, the majority of respondents used e-government for e-filling 35.5%, MyEG 19.9% and e-service 17.5%.

E-Government Services among Citizens
The first objective of the study is to examine factors influencing the acceptance and social influence.

Discussion
The objective of this study is to examine factors influencing the acceptance of e-government.
Thus, the researcher will discuss and interpret each hypothesis on performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating condition.
The first hypotheses: there is a positive and significant relationship between performance expectancy and citizens' acceptance of the Hence, the finding value .425** (2-tail significant) is in line with (Alraja, 2015; that people expect that technology would improve their performance in dealing with the government agency. Furthermore, according to (Davis et al., 1989) people hoped that technology would enable them to accomplish assigned task more quickly, improving job performance, increasing productivity, enhance the effectiveness on the job and more comfortable to perform the job. From researcher opinion, the findings show that the public is attracted to use e-government because the system facilitates them and ease their task. Thus, efficiency and effectiveness of e-government will increase public performance, hence increase public acceptance in using the e-government. This study also shows that performance expectations are not only mirrored in the efficiency of the system but have a substantial positive influence on the intent towards technological implementation.
This result also shows that the government has made vigorous attempts to simplify the system and to make it publicly more useful in communicating with government agencies.
Second hypotheses: there is a positive relationship between effort expectancy and citizens' acceptance of the e-government service.
According to Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; it is human perception that if the lesser effort taken to use particular technology or system, the more useful such technology or system. In researcher opinion, it is a human altruistic to seek something that will not cause them to use great effort. Human beings like to spend less time and effort to complete any task. The Pearson correlation value .484** (2-tail significant) shows that there is a substantial and positive relationship between effort expectancy and individual acceptance on the e-government service. The results illustrate that whenever lesser time takes to complete one task, it will encourage the public to use such a service. These findings in line (Mansour, Samir, Samia, & Billal, 2016;Moore & Benbasat, 1991) that the degree to which using innovation is perceived as being easy to use will increase the tendency for the public to use such innovation. The significant point also verified that public perceive and believe that there is no need for much effort to use e-government services (Mensah, 2019) and have favourable views on the application of e-government by Malaysia government.
Third hypotheses: there is a positive relationship between social influence and citizens' acceptance of the e-government services. Thus, it explains that social pressure either from office colleagues, neighbour, friends or relative may influence individual behaviour to experience using such "thing" either technology, foods and beverages or fashion. Curtis & Payne (2008) social influence involves considering the personal experience or view of others, particularly from the subjective culture of the reference community and specific interpersonal agreements with others. And the degree to which an invention is considered to improve one's reputation or status in one's social structure. The Pearson correlation  (Thompson et al., 1991) where he stated that people use the particular system because of their friends or co-workers also use the system, and the organization also supported the use of the According to Venkatesh & Davis, 2000;  to change to positive if they possess the right talent and able to access the system without any issues (Voutinioti, 2013). The public expected that they would be provided with necessary access and resources such as internet availability and speed of the internet as the first step to browser e-government website. The next step, e-government service should provide guidelines or measures such as "advisor" or "manual books" on how to use e-government. It was proposed that those steps and procedure should not be in jargon words, too long, and include with a picture to facilitate the public to access the system. For the workers, the organization is expected to give full support, such as providing computer and highspeed internet for their employees to complete a task relating to e-government services.

Conclusion
The findings of this study show that citizens' This study opens a new direction for future research to be undertaken, especially using a qualitative method by using a case study to gains rich insight into the experience of the public in using e-government. By using a case study, perhaps it could assist in advancing the field of e-government and obtains multidimensional reality of this service.