# Towards a New Digital Era: Observing Local E-Government Services Adoption in a Chinese Municipality
## 5 Discussions
### Digital Divide Regression Analysis  
OECD (2001) has defined the digital divide as \"the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the internet for a wide variety of activities\" [58]. For years, researchers have generally analyzed the digital divide on one of two levels: either the international digital divide between countries, or the domestic digital divide within countries [57]. This research focuses on the domestic divide--or, to be more specific, the digital divide in the same municipality--to test traditional factors of demography predicting e-services adoption. Based on these unexpected results, the research has shown weak evidence to support that education and IT literacy have a significant effect on e-services adoption, which was previously claimed by some researchers [55; 56; 57]. One of the explanations of these results may be that within the development of digital society, people are getting used to digital devices and the Internet. Ranging from smart phone to desktops, and work to social life, using e-services is no longer a \"difficult task\" for both educated and under-educated persons. In the meantime, the evolution of technologies has simplified the processes of applications from which normal people can benefit, with few barriers posed by a lack of IT literacy. Second, government e-services are heading from the \"choose to use\" stage to the \"must use\" stage in that citizens sometimes have no other choice but to interact with the government [59]. No matter whether or not citizens are well educated, or have advanced IT skills, they must try to manage these e-services when they interact with local administrations. With regard to other factors predicting a digital divide, the results still support a relationship between gender and e-services adoption, notwithstanding the fact that hypotheses are only tested in the case of Weibo. While there are recent studies claiming that there was no significant difference between \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Variable** & **Website Adoption** & **App Adoption** & **Weibo Adoption** & **WeChat Adoption** \\ \hline  & VIF & \(1/\)VIF & VIF & \(1/\)VIF & VIF & \(1/\)VIF & VIF & \(1/\)VIF \\
**Age** & \(1.15\) & 0.87 & 1.18 & 0.85 & 1.15 & 0.87 & 1.17 & 0.85 \\
**Gender (_ref_ = female_)** & \(1.02\) & 0.98 & 1.02 & 0.98 & 1.03 & 0.97 & 1.03 & 0.97 \\
**Residence (_ref_ = non)** & \(1.13\) & 0.89 & 1.14 & 0.88 & 1.16 & 0.86 & 1.18 & 0.85 \\
**Education** & \(1.44\) & 0.69 & 1.46 & 0.68 & 1.44 & 0.69 & 1.45 & 0.69 \\
**IT literacy** & \(1.57\) & 0.64 & 1.57 & 0.64 & 1.57 & 0.64 & 1.58 & 0.63 \\
**Awareness** & & & & & & & & \\ Web & \(1.54\) & 0.65 & & & & & & \\ App & & & & & & & & \\ Weibo & & & & & 1.54 & 0.65 & & \\ WeChat & & & & & & & 1.59 & 0.63 \\
**Intention to Use** & & & & & & & & \\ Web & \(1.51\) & 0.66 & & & & & & \\ App & & & 1.50 & 0.67 & & & & \\ Weibo & & & & & 1.43 & 0.70 & & \\ WeChat & & & & & & & 1.43 & 0.70 \\
**Satisfaction** & & & & & & & & \\ Web & \(1.43\) & 0.70 & & & & & & \\ App & & & & 1.47 & 0.68 & & & & \\ Weibo & & & & & 1.48 & 0.68 & & & \\ WeChat & & & & & & & 1.51 & 0.66 \\
**Mean VIF** & & \(1.35\) & & \(1.33\) & & \(1.35\) & & \(1.37\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Results of Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) of Regression Analysis. females and males in adoption of e-government services [59; 60], or that females make better use of digital channels than males aside from current inequalities in employment, income or education [51], the result of the regression for the Weibo service adoption is showing that men are more eager to use the Weibo government official account than women. It may be related to the characteristics of the Weibo government official account, which is more news/policies-oriented and emphasizes political discussions that are favored by men.