Motivations for Digital Transformation in Government: Insights From the Push-Pull-Mooring Model and Age-Related Inertia

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many enterprises are looking to use electronic services to avoid human-to-human contact. During this transition period, enterprises are embracing new business models and digital transformation to overcome the crisis. Similarly, the government is also in need of digital transformation in response to these significant changes. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the motivations behind government digital transformation. Consequently, this study aims to fill this gap in the existing literature. The push-pull-mooring model is suitable for explaining the process of transferring from an inherent way to a new way, such as migration and changes in switching behavior. Therefore, it is an apt framework for elucidating the process of adopting digital transformation within government agencies. In total, data were collected from 268 government employees to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results show that the motivations of digital transformation are indeed affected by the push-pull-mooring model. These motivations encompass service process inconvenience, avoid face-to-face contact, strengthen information security, top management support, fear of learning new IT, and the cost of digitalization. Interestingly, service process inconvenience and fear of learning new IT exhibit interaction effects in relation to age-related inertia. This finding suggests that government agencies can provide varied encouragement and incentives based on employees' age groups.