Factors affecting electronic government adoption among Algerian petroleum companies: The moderating role of government policy and trust

E-government is a global trend that accelerates across countries, which affiliates firm’s internal and external connections and transactions, resulting in firm’s transparency and efficiency. However, interoperability within organisations is limited and ineffective in developing countries like Algeria. The current study aimed to identify factors influencing e-government adoption in Algeria context, based on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI) and the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. The TOE framework includes technological, organisational, and environmental aspects. IT infrastructure, security, and web design are the dimensions of technological factors. Top management support, strategy, and organisational culture are the elements of organisational factors. Finally, environmental factors include awareness, training, and rules and regulations. Government policy and trust are examined as moderators to the relationship between TOE factors and e-government adoption. Twenty-seven hypotheses were tested in this study. Data were collected from 170 top management executives of petroleum companies (65.4% of response rate) in four regions of Algeria (south, north, west, and east) using a postal questionnaire. SPSS version 26.0 and PLS-SEM 3.3.3 were used to analyse the data. Overall, the findings showed that technological and organisational factors impact Algerian petroleum companies’ e-government adoption across multiple dimensions. When government policy and trust were added as moderators in the model, the relationship between TOE factors and e-government adoption shifted slightly. However, for government policy, only security, web design, training, and rules and regulations found to be moderating the interrelationship. Meanwhile, only security was moderated by trust towards e-government adoption. IT infrastructure and top management support are two of the most critical factors influencing e-government adoption. The current research findings can specifically assist Algerian firms, especially petroleum companies, in gaining a better understanding of the e-government adoption process. The firms are suggested to have a strong IT infrastructure and top management support in order to improve their e-government adoption.