# Towards a New Digital Era: Observing Local E-Government Services Adoption in a Chinese Municipality
## 6 Conclusions  
This research has examined the adoption of traditional e-government services and emerging government SNS applications. In contrast to comparative research across nations that have primarily focused on the adoption of general services, a case study of local e-services in which citizens were surveyed about their adoption habits illustrates the latest progress in local e-government services development. E-government services via SNS applications are innovatively implemented in China nowadays so that every citizen can access public services more easily on smart phones via commercial platforms known as \"WeChat\" and \"Weibo\". Compared to traditional e-services operated by government departments (government website portals and the official app), WeChat and Weibo have shown their strength in acquiring massive userbases rapidly--especially WeChat (called \"Super App\" by the New York Times) which has the highest 800 million active users out of Chinese population of 1.4 billion. It also reveals that the emerging government SNS applications are widely accepted by different age groups. Regression analysis was employed to test whether traditional determinants of e-government adoption still have a role in different local e-services applications. Traditional demographic factors like gender, educational background, and IT literacy showed a weak relationship or no relationship to e-services adoption. It can be assumed that in a developing digital society, people are gradually adapting to digital devices and the Internet, resulting in the view that using e-services is no longer a \"difficult task\" for either high- or low-educated persons. Meanwhile, the evolution of technologies has simplified e-services procedures to the point that people can handle the operations with few barriers to education and IT experience. Second, government e-services are becoming increasingly important in interactions between public departments and individuals. Citizens must train themselves to follow the digital course regardless of their background and knowledge. In addition, the binary household registration system in mainland China (known as _hukou_) has separated the rural and urban populations not only in geographic terms but also in social, economic, and political terms [53]. Therefore, the original factor of \"Local residency\" has been examined. The result shows that local e-services adoption significantly differs between residents and non-residents. It can be presumed that non-residents may suffer from information inequalities or that they have less need to interact with local governments. Finally, cognitive factors--known as \"awareness\", \"intention to use\", and \"satisfaction\" as shown in literature--are shown to be positively related to e-services adoption, as well as in new government SNS. Accordingly, these results demonstrate that technology acceptance models are still influencing citizens' adoption of emerging e-services. Nevertheless, the limitations of this research should be noted. Some of the determinant aspects may not be covered in predicting e-services adoption, regarding both traditional e-government and new government SNS applications. The deficiencies of this research could be remedied by future research that focuses on multidimensional comparative researches among municipalities. On the other hand, with the popularity of social networking applications, not only empirical cases, but also theoretical efforts regarding government services on SNS platforms should be made, as well as the applications of enterprise architecture. As introduced by this research, the WeChat and Weibo platforms are unique cases representing peculiar collaborations between local governments and Internet corporations in China. While this remains an intricate issue requiring more study and discussion, this research sheds light on some of its complexities. The author is grateful to Chongqing railway public security office for assistance with the survey, and anonymous officers for their useful help in data collecting.