Channel choice determinants; an exploration of the factors that determine the choice of a service channel in citizen initiated contacts

Citizens have various service channels at their disposal to interact with governmental agencies. In this paper we explore citizens’ motives to choose a certain channel in a certain situation. We conducted a qualitative study to accumulate the most important behavioral determinants. Six groups of determinants were found; habit, channel characteristics, task characteristics, situational constraints, experiences and personal characteristics. People appear to generally follow two lines of decision making when choosing channels, the first is based on habits. When task complexity and ambiguity increase, people start reasoning and follow the second line; channel choice based on a thorough elaboration between task and channel characteristics.