Impact of the digital divide on e-government: Expanding from channel choice to channel usage

Many scholars have studied the digital divide, however, often apart from eGovernment research. Therefore, more interdisciplinary research is required as eGovernment can be both hindered by and contribute to the digital divide. First research steps have already been taken, for instance by using access and socioeconomic status as representations for the digital divide. However, the digital divide discipline has developed rapidly and contemporary research findings indicate that, at least in developed countries, not access and socioeconomic status, but digital skills are important representations of the digital divide. Therefore, in order to explore new explanations in channel choice, we incorporated further developed digital skills measurements into eGovernment research channel choice measurements. Accordingly, this research explores the citizen's perspective by studying actual channel use in the Netherlands.