Chatbots as Part of Digital Government Service Provision – A User Perspective

Abstract

Chatbots are taken up as part of digital government service provision. While the success of chatbots for this purpose depends on these being accepted by their intended users, there is a lack of knowledge concerning user perceptions of such chatbots and the implications of these for intention to use. In response to this, an exploratory qualitative interview study was conducted with 15 users of a chatbot for municipality service provision. The interviews showed the importance of performance expectations, effort expectations, and trust. In particular, while a municipality chatbot supporting service triaging may be perceived as beneficial for their availability and to provide support navigation of municipality services and information, this benefit is compared by users to the benefit of other digital government channels. On the basis of the findings, we present key implications to theory and practice, and suggest avenues for future research.