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Chatbots as Part of Digital Government Service Provision – A User Perspective

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Chatbot Research and Design (CONVERSATIONS 2022)

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Abstract

Chatbots are taken up as part of digital government service provision. While the success of chatbots for this purpose depends on these being accepted by their intended users, there is a lack of knowledge concerning user perceptions of such chatbots and the implications of these for intention to use. In response to this, an exploratory qualitative interview study was conducted with 15 users of a chatbot for municipality service provision. The interviews showed the importance of performance expectations, effort expectations, and trust. In particular, while a municipality chatbot supporting service triaging may be perceived as beneficial for their availability and to provide support navigation of municipality services and information, this benefit is compared by users to the benefit of other digital government channels. On the basis of the findings, we present key implications to theory and practice, and suggest avenues for future research.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported in part by the Research Council of Norway grant no. 270940, in part by the EC H2020 grant no. 101004594, ETAPAS.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Forskningsveien 3A, 0373, Oslo, Norway

    Nadia Abbas & Cato A. Bjørkli

  2. SINTEF, Forskningsveien 1, 0373, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

Authors
  1. Nadia Abbas
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  3. Cato A. Bjørkli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Asbjørn Følstad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

  2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

  3. CERTH-ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Symeon Papadopoulos

  4. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Effie L.-C. Law

  5. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Ewa Luger

  6. University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

    Morten Goodwin

  7. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

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Abbas, N., Følstad, A., Bjørkli, C.A. (2023). Chatbots as Part of Digital Government Service Provision – A User Perspective. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13815. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25581-6_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25581-6_5

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