## 2 Background and Hypotheses
### Moderating Role of E-Governance  
E-governance is defined as \"the public sector's use of information and communication technologies to improve information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process, and making government more accountable, transparent and effective... its objective is to engage, enable and empower the citizen\" [59]. Citizens, corporations, governments, and institutions all benefit from e-governance. Citizens get benefits from electronic services that are affordable, convenient, instantaneous, efficient, transparent, and equitable around the clock; businesses take advantage of lower time in registration of new business set-up, get assistance in undertaking e-commerce business, superior compliance to regulatory standards to conduct business, convenient and more transparent while doing business with government through e-tendering, and preventing corruption during finance clearing from government compensation by employing e-banking. Government institutions benefit from up-to-date information for proper policy decisions and regulatory control; quick handling of provided data for improved decision-making; efficient management; stronger propagation of regulatory norms; improved results in regulatory mechanisms such as taxation; higher performance in social sectors such ashealth, education, and social welfare; and developing a positive impression of dynamic modern government in public. Smart city governments constantly look for modern techniques to provide the quality of public services. E-Government is one indication of a drastic transformation in service delivery to citizens, in which unique information and communication technologies (ICT), mechanisms, organizational structures, and management systems are launched to promote public significance and generate positive change in people's lives [60]. During this evolution, a significant number of innovations were implemented. Compared to the corporate sector, where organizations attempt to maximize competitiveness to generate profit, government institutions strive to innovate to generate better performance. Further, public sector services are poised to generate public performance and improve desired public outcomes. The three main principles of public sector innovations are novelty, execution, and implications, which lead to better public outcomes such as reliability, performance, transparency, and user satisfaction [61]. Service delivery innovation is among the best-acclaimed innovations in public sector organizations in Eu countries; according to the 2010 European Union's Yardstick, 66 percent of organizations across the EU-27 report experienced incorporated innovations in public services [62; 63]. System and governance strategies for innovation have been identified as the most prevalent, particularly at the domestic level. Environmental challenges, increasing population, and poverty have highlighted the use of creative and innovative approaches to the challenges confronting public services in European cities. As novel approaches to address the most complex urban challenges, modern e-governance frameworks, organizational techniques, and transparency have been proposed [64]. Technology innovation has recently boosted governments' capabilities to perform the necessary methodologies and procedures to achieve this [65]. ICT has been invented to provide an intensifying range of services, provide people access to online platforms, and mitigate service delivery costs. These activities fall under the umbrella of e-government, which aims to \"enable and improve the efficiency with which government services and information are provided to citizens, employees, businesses, and government agencies\" [66]. In terms of communication channels for the delivery of government services, the online channel is likely to be the top priority for governments, owing to its cost-effectiveness [67]. As a result, governments are interested in their citizens' adoption of the online service delivery channel.