Citizen patronage behavior of government social media services

Abstract

From the government’s position in which communication and relationships with its citizens are crucial, as social media grows in popularity, questions regarding how it is being used to communicate with citizens become important. Thus, governments should effectively utilize social media while considering the significant diversity of characteristics and risks that are inherent in social media, alongside reflecting on the potential for practical use as a channel for government service provision and communication. In particular, understanding a citizen’s perceived value of a government service through social media and social media’s media synchronicity under the characteristics of government services could provide significant insights into the government’s social media use. Also, it is meaningful to understand how attractiveness in e-government, which is the primary communication channel for G2C, affects citizen satisfaction of the government service provided with social media. We investigated the role of social media as a communication channel for enhancing citizen patronage behavior in government social media services and the effect of social media on their satisfaction depending on the perceived value using a structural equation. This study emphasizes the importance of appropriate understanding of the media characteristics of social media in order to increase citizen satisfaction with government social media services.