Exploration of the usability quality attributes of mobile government services: a literature review

Service quality

The term ‘service quality’ has drawn the attention of scholars and practitioners due to its importance in improving an organizations’ performance (Reis, Pena & Lopes, 2003). It enhances the organization’s success by following up on its best practice (Roberts, Varki & Brodie, 2003). Service quality refers to an organization’s ability to meet or exceed customer expectations (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988). The service quality is an overall judgment that generates the difference between customer expectations of the service and the perceived service. A study by Yang & Chen (2000) suggests that it is necessary to understand customers according to their service quality perceptions. The customer’s perception is the comparison of the customer’s expectations with the customer’s perceived service. Quality of service represents the relationship between the service provider and the service delivered to the customer (Parasuraman, 2002). With the development of the world’s business and organization sectors, service quality attracts more attention from different fields, and it gets a range of definitions and extensions of construct based on the requirements and environment for each field (Ojasalo, 2001; Roberts, Varki & Brodie, 2003; Svensson & Padin, 2012).

Akter, D’Ambra & Ray (2010) stated that service quality research must be focused on a particular research environment, suggesting a need to identify basic concepts and measurements related to end-users’ perceptions, their detailed characteristics and the type of context. Categories of service quality dimensions differ among scholars. A study by Jaafar Desmal et al. (2019) stated that the two main dimensions of service quality are technical and functional, while Zhang et al. (2019) argue that service quality is constructed from eight main dimensions: website appearance, personal interaction, efficiency, aesthetic design, privacy/security, integration, personalization and fulfilment/reliability. The most famous theoretical base of service quality is the study by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1988), which stated that the concept of service quality consists of 10 basic dimensions; these are “reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding, and tangibles” These suggested ten dimensions have been reviewed and reduced to five main dimensions – “tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy” – and are referred to as the SERVQUAL quality model (see Fig. 1). Despite the popularity of the SERVQUAL model, it does not apply to all fields of services (Landrum & Prybutok, 2004). Many scholars have modified the mode of SERVQUAL. Cronin & Taylor (1992) have revised the SERVQUAL model and created a new model named SERVPERF that aims to measure service quality in the form of its performance (Lu, Zhang & Wang, 2009), while the model of SERVQUAL measures service quality in terms of both expectation and performance. Brady & Cronin (2001) suggested a service quality model consisting of three main dimensions: “interaction, physical experience, and outcome quality”. However, measuring the service quality required identifying related dimensions to the particular field of study to avoid failure or inaccurate evaluation results. Three main criteria need to be considered when measuring service quality: the objectives, the context of the research, and the type of service provided (Akter, D’Ambra & Ray, 2010).

The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has opened a way for businesses to integrate the technologies within self-service techniques. At the end of the 1990s, the research had started to focus on electronic service quality since running services were based on electronic transactions. The first definition of electronic service quality appeared in a study by Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Malhotra (2000) and was given as “the extent to which a website facilitates efficient and effective shopping, purchasing, and delivery”. This definition refers to the provider of services using a website to pay attention to customers’ needs and lessen the technical problems that may occur while performing electronic services. Since then, many scholars have proposed electronic service quality models. One of these is the study by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra (2005) which proposed a model named “E-S-Qual” consisting of four attributes, these being “efficiency, fulfillment, system availability, and privacy”. Based on this e-SQ model, other scholars have proposed other models to fit the quality of e-commerce, websites, etc. The present research considers the theoretical models by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra (2005) and Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1988) as guidelines to construct the usability quality model of the mGovernment portal.

In the field of mobile government services, a number of studies have analyzed the service quality framework. For example, Al-Hubaishi, Ahmad & Hussain (2017) conducted a study of the service quality framework of mobile government service. It proposed six dimensions: “interaction quality, environmental quality, information quality, system quality, network quality, and outcome quality”. Another study by Shareef et al. (2014) proposed a framework for mobile government services consisting of four main service quality dimensions: “interactivity, understandability, authenticity, and security”. The authors of Shareef et al. (2014) focused their exploratory study on the Indian mobile government’s service quality. They used an online survey to collect the data from a group of experts to prioritize the service quality parameters of Indian mGovernment services. The study of Chanana, Agrawal & Punia (2016) ranked the eighteen parameters of mGovernment service quality, and the top five parameters were “privacy, getting things done in the expected time frame, getting things done right the first time, ease of use of applications, and fast navigation through applications without jams”.

Mobile government services

Mobile government is defined as “the use of various mobile platforms (e.g., cell phones, notepads) for deploying government information and services to citizens in a way that is independent of time and location” (Liu et al., 2014, p. 433). Mobile government is a form of government services provided to the public via mobile devices connected with a wireless internet connection (Saadi, Ahmad & Hussain, 2017). It is an upgraded electronic government service (Eom & Kim, 2014; Faisal & Talib, 2016). Mobile government services are not limited to mobile devices only, but it extends to all intelligent devices (Amailef & Lu, 2011). The accessibility from anywhere and at any time are the two fundamental unique characteristics of mobile government portals that encourage government authorities to extend the provided services through them. The mobile government environment has other unique characteristics, such as mobility, personalization and portability (Wang & Lin, 2012). With advanced wireless technologies and the popularity of using mobile devices, the government authorities can deliver governmental services to remote areas (Liu et al., 2014). The standard categories of mobile government are “Government To Government – G2G”, “Government To Employees – G2E”, “Government To Business – G2B”, and “Government to Citizens – G2C” (Amailef & Lu, 2011). This study analyzes the service quality delivered in the form of “Government to Citizens – G2C”.

Concept of usability

The concept of usability is an absolute term driven from human-computer interaction (HCI). The definition of usability is the status of using the product or services by the targeted user to perform particular tasks with consideration of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of use (ISO, 2011). The usability concept was reviewed and replaced with the term “user-friendly” in the early 1980s, which was ambiguous and reflected a subjective connotation (Issa & Isaias, 2015). The usability concept is illustrated in any product since the user can identify the detailed criteria of products effectively, efficiently, and whether they satisfy the user (Pant, 2015). Hence, the user can determine if the required product contains usability features (ChanLin & Hung, 2016). The three main features of a usable product are that a user can easily use a product for the first time, the product meets the users’ objectives, and the product provides an easy way to recall the interface and the ability to reuse it next time (ChanLin & Hung, 2016; Huang et al., 2015; Ke & Su, 2018). These three criteria differ among scholars. Authors Sagar & Saha (2017) argue that the standard usability criteria attributes involve “Efficiency, Effectiveness, Satisfaction, and Learnability”. The usability concept criteria are aimed at assessing a product by recording the user’s performance with the product (Wallace et al., 2013). Other measurement criteria of usability focus on the task, where tasks are divided based on sub-usability measurement criteria (Grönroos, 1984; Ke & Su, 2018; Wei, Chang & Cheng, 2015). Different applied criteria in the usability context enhance more detailed quantitative indicators that target improving productivity (ChanLin & Hung, 2016). Restrictions of usability criteria were found on measuring satisfaction and engagement due to being related to human emotion. Therefore, evaluating the usability of a system that requires human interaction needs to be scaled according to the domains of “efficient, effective, safe, utility, easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to use” (Issa & Isaias, 2015, p. 19). This is a core role of HCI when assessing the domain of the usability of electronic systems.

Usability challenges and mobile government service quality

The mobile device with a wireless internet connection has unique characteristics that differ from computer devices. These characteristics pose challenges for scholars and participants when examining service quality usability dimensions in a mobile government context. Mobile devices’ special features involve mobility, connectivity, resolution of the display, limited screen size, limited power and processing speed, and limited input methods (Weichbroth, 2020).

• – Mobile context: refers to the information that forms the interactions between the user, the application, and the surrounding environment. It may contain the location, objects, identities of people, and any elements that can affect the users’ attention (Ke & Su, 2018).

• – Connectivity: A poor wireless connection is a common technical issue that is faced by general mobile users. This may occur while users are trying to access mGovernment services, or uploading or downloading files. The strength of the wireless data differs according to the location, time, and service provider. Therefore, the question of the connectivity of mobile government services must be considered while measuring service quality (Punchoojit & Hongwarittorrn, 2017).

• – The screen’s limited size: A mobile device comes with a limited screen size, which impacts the usability dimension of the mGovernment service quality. Usability can measure the complexity of the contents of the mGovernment application and how it can be managed to fit with the end-users’ general devices

• – Display resolutions: The resolution of the mobile’s screen size varies according to the range of pixels (480 × 800–1,440 × 2,560). This depends on the features of each brand of mobile device. It impacts the information illustrated as multimedia, which influences the usability of the mGovernment service (Zhang & Adipat, 2005).

• – Limited processing speed and power capacity: The limited capacity for both the power and memory of mobile devices affects the applications’ processing speed, mainly when the running applications are based on graphics. Mobile devices are very slow when processing these. The limitations in speed and power capacity have influenced mobile government services (Sagar & Saha, 2017).

• – Methods of data entry: Inputting the data into a small screen is challenging for service providers due to the screen size limitation. The means of inputting data into a mobile device can be through small buttons and a list of labels that allows end-users to select the required option. These input data methods are time-consuming and affect the speed of performing online transactions, especially when there is a time restriction to complete a particular task. Limitations of inputting data through mobile devices affects service quality in the form of usability (Wallace et al., 2013).

Usability model of mobile government service quality

This study investigates the constructs related to usability dimensions, which are fundamental components in the mobile government framework. Few scholars have focused on the quality framework of mobile government services. Al-Hubaishi, Ahmad & Hussain (2017) and Shareef et al. (2014), have proposed service quality frameworks and suggested conducting further investigation into their dimensions and constructs. The majority of scholars have used other scale models to evaluate mobile service quality (Negi, 2009). Using other scales related to the mobile government’s environment makes it more complex and challenging to evaluate it due to the different contexts (Lu, Zhang & Wang, 2009; Wang & Lin, 2012). The absence of a particular scale for mobile government services leads organizations to use an incompatible service quality scale that gives the wrong service quality assessment (Özer, Argan & Argan, 2013).

Investigating the usability features for mGovernment portal required understanding the uniqueness of the smart devices that reflects on the end-users needs to deal and perform the transactions at mGovernment portal (Al-Hubaishi, Ahmad & Hussain, 2018; Alhammad & Elmouzan, 2020). Lu, Zhang & Wang (2009) considered the unique features of mobile services to propose a multidimensional, hierarchical model for measuring service quality. The study constructed a framework based on three dimensions that formed the model of service quality: interaction, environment and outcome quality. These fundamental dimensions are similar to studies by Cronin & Taylor (1992) and Rust & Oliver (1994). Venkatesh, Ramesh & Massey (2003) aimed to measure usability by comparing it when operating on both wired and wireless websites. The authors used the field study to investigate the usability of end-users’ perceptions while using the different websites. The data was collected from a total of 812 participates through a questionnaire. The websites fell into four categories: banking, tourism, news, and shopping, representing information and transactional websites. The results of the study found the usability attributes of mobile commerce to be “Content, Ease of use, Made-for-the medium, Promotion, and Emotion”. A study by Hyvärinen, Kaikkonen & Hiltunen (2005) conducted a usability test on two mobile banking applications and compared them in terms of navigation elements. The usability constructs proposed by this study were “Effectiveness, Efficiency & Satisfaction”. These usability constructs are derived from the International Organization for Standardization usability model (ISO 9241-11). Many scholars have investigated usability constructs based on the ISO model (Huang, Chou & Bias, 2005; Nah, Siau & Sheng, 2005; Wallace et al., 2013; Wei, Chang & Cheng, 2015). Other scholars have expanded the ISO usability model to include different constructs to cover the overall system and interface design of mobile applications (Cyr, Head & Ivanov, 2006; Gebauer, Tang & Baimai, 2008; Punchoojit & Hongwarittorrn, 2017). Recent scholars have investigated the usability construct to fit the context of electronic commerce, mobile commerce or electronic government. At the same time, there is a lack of studies investigating usability constructs that can be used to evaluate service quality in the mobile government context. In this section, the researcher proposes the usability constructs of the mobile government service quality framework.

Search method

The present research uses literature reviews through the model of Okoli’s systematic steps (Okoli, 2015). The steps are planning, selection, extraction, and execution of literature reviews.

E-Library databases

The electronic library databases that were used in the current research come from ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science, SAGE, and ACM. The researchers set the period of published research starting from 2005–2022 to get more insight into the caller phone’s usability characteristics until the development of smartphones. The main search keywords were: “usability”, “mobile”, “mobile services”, “e-service”, “online service”, “electronic service”, “mobile government”, “electronic government”, “mGovernment”, “mGovernment service”, “service quality”, “e-service quality”, and “online service quality”. During the search of the e-library databases, the Boolean operators applied “AND”, “OR”, “NOT”, “SAME”, “NEAR” to get the most relevant literature.

Research progress

The first stage of the literature review was the planning that aimed at identifying the research’s main purpose and clearly describe the detailed objectives. In this stage, the draft research protocol was agreed among the researchers to ensure the standard of research and output. The next step of the research progress was the selection process that acted as a screening for the inclusion of literature. The researchers agreed standard criteria to include or to eliminate literature. The inclusion of the literature was based on the use, evaluation or measuring of the concept of usability within the mobile device (cell phone or smartphone). The third stage was the extraction, which allowed the researchers to extract the data systematically and clearly described the detailed criteria of the usability according to the methodology used per study.

The last stage was the execution process which enabled the researchers to synthesize the collected literature and draw up the findings and write the results.