Carrots or Sticks: How Regulatory Instruments Within Public Organizations Shape E-Government Performance?

Regulation seeks to achieve socially desired goals through standards setting and enforcement. However, limited research has explored how regulation within public organizations shapes outcomes in the e-government field. Drawing on responsive regulation theory, this study investigates how various regulatory instruments influence e-government performance. This study constructs a panel dataset of Chinese prefectural cities from 2018 to 2022 to analyze the effects of incentive-based, training-based, and sanction-based regulation. The results indicate that all three types of regulatory instruments significantly improve e-government performance. Furthermore, the interaction between incentive-based and sanction-based regulation positively affects e-government performance, while the interaction between training-based and sanction-based regulation has a negative effect. These findings identify the importance of regulatory instruments in developing e-government performance. This article offers a valuable reference for local government practitioners to formulate and adjust regulatory instruments in their future actions within digital governance.