internet usage of local government employees: a study of the effect of individual preferences, group...

The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 323–331

Research note

Internet usage of local government employees:A study of the effect of individual preferences,

group influences, and administrative factors

Yuan Ting∗, Ron Grant

Division of Political Science and Criminal Justice, California State University at Fullerton,Fullerton, CA 92834-6848, USA

Abstract

Using data from a survey, this study investigates how local government employees use the Inter-net to carry out their day-by-day work. Our survey reports that most employees use the Internet todownload information, communicate, and perform routine tasks. Many of them use the Internet forpersonal purposes at work. We also test seven hypotheses to explore different variables that may explainthe Internet use of government employees. The results show that individual acceptance of the Inter-net, perceived Internet importance to the work group’s mission, and employer-provided training andtechnical support have a significant impact on their Internet usage at work. This note reports our pre-liminary findings from a large project to study the role and impacts of information technology in publicorganizations.© 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Internet usage in government agencies has grown strikingly in recent years as the govern-ment reinvents electronically to meet the needs of citizens. In just a few years, the Internethas become part of many employees’ day-by-day work in all levels of government, and haschanged in many ways how government employees do their work. Using data from a survey,the purpose of this study is to shed some light on how local government employees use theInternet to perform their day-by-day work. Specifically, we propose and test seven research

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 714 278 3521.E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Ting).

0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2005.03.001

324 Y. Ting, R. Grant / The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 323–331

hypotheses to explore major variables that may explain the Internet usage of governmentemployees.

2. Research hypotheses

Limited research has been done on the Internet usage of government employees, but studieson information technology acceptance at work provide a useful starting point to understand theway in which government employees perceive and use the Internet. They suggest that the accep-tance and use of IT is shaped byindividual perceptions(Elliott & Tevavichulada, 1999; Garson,1995; Vasu, Stewart, & Garson, 1997), group influences(Rice & Aydin, 1991), andorganiza-tional factors(Carlopio, 1998; Guthrie, 1999; Majchrzak & Cotton, 1988; Speier & Brown,1997). Brehm and Gates (1997)identify three types of control in the workplace—individualpreferences, group influences, and administrative rules. Organizations use these controls toregulate employee behavior, elicit greater work effort, and reduce employee resistance. Asmore government employees perform their tasks on the Internet, we propose that Internetusage may be subject to the same individual, group, and organizational forces in the work-place. For example, government agencies may develop and enforce stricter rules to monitoremployees to ensure that they use the Internet for work-related tasks, or to discourage Internetsurfing for personal purposes. We develop the following hypotheses to assess the individ-ual, group, and organizational factors that may affect the Internet usage of local governmentemployees.1

2.1. Individual preferences

Hypothesis 1aInternet usage will be lower for local government employees who have strongerfeeling of being replaced by the Internet.

Hypothesis 1bInternet usage will be greater for local government employees who have lessinequitable feeling resulting from the Internet usage.

Hypothesis 1cInternet usage will be greater for local government employees who feel theInternet is easy to use and useful to their work.

2.2. Group influences

Hypothesis 2aInternet usage will be greater for local government employees who identifystrongly with the work group and more people use the Internet in the group.

Hypothesis 2bInternet usage will be greater for local government employees who identifystrongly with the work group, and think the Internet is important to the group’s mission.

Y. Ting, R. Grant / The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 323–331 325

2.3. Administrative factors

Hypothesis 3aInternet usage will be lower for local government employees who are subjectto more administrative control.Hypothesis 3bInternet usage will be greater for local government employees who receive moreInternet training and support.

3. Data and methodology

We use data from a survey we conducted between April and June 2000. The survey wasdesigned to gather information on the Internet usage of local government employees throughoutSouthern California (Ting & Grant, 2000a). The 69-item questionnaire was mailed to 494members of a regional government employee association in Southern California.2 Of those,295 returned their questionnaires, providing a response rate of almost 60 percent. Of the 295respondents, 55% are male, 77% are white, 70% are between the age of 31 and 50, 92% arecollege educated, 32% have been with the same employer for more than 10 years, and 20%reported being at the top level in their division.

Southern California cities may not be representative of the entire United States regardingemployee access to and use of Internet at work. However, this study represents an importantstep in analyzing day-by-day Internet usage of government employees.

We develop two dependent variables—Internet Usage-Work and Internet Usage-Personal—to test our hypotheses. Since our dependent variables are ordinal variables, weuse the logistic regression technique to test the validity of our argument.

We include seven independent variables in our analysis to test the hypotheses. We alsoinclude three control variables in the analysis: Age, Tenure, and Education (please seeAppendix Afor variable definitions and measurement specifications).

4. Findings

Table 1shows almost 97% of all the respondents reported having Internet access from theiroffices. Of those, virtually all of them (99%) reported using their email.3 Our respondentsreport using other tools less frequently than email and the WWW.

Table 1Frequency of Internet usage by different toolsa (N= 295)

Tools Never Monthly 2–3 days/week Daily

Email (%) 1 2 10 87Newsgroup 63 19 10 8FTP/Listserv 72 15 6 7Intranet 41 10 17 32WWW 1 7 37 55

a Respondents were asked, “How often do you use each of the following Internet tools?” and to check one offour possible answers (never, monthly, 2–3 days/week, or daily) for each Internet tool.


Table 2Percentage of employees using Internet for different functional tasks or personal information (N= 295)

All respondents (%) By employer size (%)

100 or less 101–350 351 or more

Functional tasks (in day-by-day work)Post information for public access 59a 60 54 63Allow citizens to submit information online 41 42 41 39Download information or software for work 85 87 83 86Perform routine tasks such as purchasing and

recruitment40 54 31 42

Communications related to work orprofessional development

82 78 82 85

Personal informationUse the Internetdaily for personal information

in the workplace30b 35 30 27

a Percentage of employees reported using the Internet to post information for public access. In our survey,employees were asked if they used the Internet to perform any of the different functional tasks in their day-by-daywork.

b Percentage of employees reporting use of the Internetdaily for personal information. In our survey, employ-ees were asked how often they use the Internet for non-work-related purposes. Responses range from daily, to2–3days/week, to monthly, and to never.

4.1. Work-related activities

Table 2shows that much of the work-related information and technology on the Inter-net has found its way to the hands of these employees. Interestingly, employees from thelarger organizations (85%) are more inclined to use the Internet for communications than theircounterparts in smaller organizations (78%). This may be a result of differences in policiesand level of support between large and small public organizations. This may also be a resultof spatial and geographical factors. The greater use of email in larger organizations serves topersonalize the work environment and helps employees stay connected to both the people andhappenings in their organizations; while there is less need for this in smaller organizations dueto greater face-to-face contacts with colleagues.

Surprisingly, employees of the smaller organizations (54%) are more likely to perform rou-tine tasks via the Internet than their counterparts in larger organizations (42%). We speculatethat smaller organizations have less convoluted work procedures and rules than larger orga-nizations, and therefore can implement new information technologies more quickly and moreeasily enable employees to perform various routine tasks via the Internet.

4.2. Non-work-related activities

Our survey also asked how often government employees use the Internet at work for personalpurposes.Table 2shows overall 30% reported using the Internetdaily for personal information.However, these numbers should be interpreted with caution because of possible underreporting.Although it is difficult to get accurate measures of personal Internet use, most people wouldagree that the phenomenon is significant and growing.


The larger the organization, the less likely are employees to report using the Internetdaily forpersonal information. These findings seem to suggest that larger organizations are more awareof the legal risks over Internet misuse. Probably, they are more likely to institute more formaland stricter policies on acceptable Internet usage at work, and install monitoring systems tocrack down on personal use.

While we could only speculate that many employees see Internet access at work as a “perk”to justify non-work-related Internet uses, personal use of the Internet can be a drain to employeeproductivity, and have significant ethical and legal ramifications.

4.3. Employer policies on Internet usage

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of our respondents reported their employers enforce restrictionson personal use of the Internet, with some allowing limited personal use. Such policies willbecome more universal in the public workplace. Fewer employees (28%) reported that theirorganizations have any formal policy to restrict the overall amount of time employees canspend on the Internet. Only 26% reported that their employers have formal policies ensuringthe privacy of employee’s Internet activities and communications. Written comments indicatethat some public employers are instructing their employees to treat all email messages andother Internet uses the same as official business memos and regular public files, which aresubject to employer review and monitoring. Seventy percent of our respondents reported thattheir employers have formal policies to restrict illegal and inappropriate email content. Lessthan half (43%) reported that their employers have policies specifically restricting disclosure ofconfidential and copyright information on the Internet. Finally, 85% of our respondents reportedthat their employers have deployed some security safeguards such as virus and inappropriatesite scans on their Internet connections.

4.4. Results from logistic analyses

Table 3displays the results of our logistic analyses testing our hypotheses. It should be notedthat this study claims no causal relationship between our dependent and independent variablesdue to our reliance on cross-sectional survey data.

The results of our logistic analyses partially support the hypotheses regarding individualpreferences.Hypotheses 1a and 1bare not supported, however,Hypothesis 1cis, suggesting thatwhen employees think the Internet is easy to use and useful to their jobs, they are more likely touse it to perform work-related tasks, and less likely to pursue personal activities on the Internet.

Hypothesis 2ais not supported. This may reflect the limitations of the way in which weoperationalize the influences of work group on Internet use. Our results supportHypothesis 2b(although at only the .1 level of significance), suggesting employees are more likely to per-form work-related tasks and less likely to engage in personal activities on the Internet if theyhave a strong group identification, and perceive the Internet as important to their group’smission.

Hypothesis 3ais not supported by any statistically significant result. Therefore, we cannotconclude that monitoring and performance standards imposed by the organization have anyimpact on reducing Internet use for either work or personal purposes. However,Hypothesis 3b


Table 3Logistic analyses for the determinants of Internet Usage-Work and Internet Usage-Personal (standard errors are inparentheses)

Independent variables Dependent variable

Internet Usage-Work Internet Usage-Personal

Intercept −0.54 (1.51) 1.18 (1.47)Replacement Feeling 0.03 (0.14) −0.17 (0.14)Equity Feeling −0.14 (0.11) −0.09 (0.11)Internet Use Acceptance 0.19∗ (0.11) −0.30** (0.11)Group Internet Use −0.21 (0.30) −0.01 (0.31)Important to Group 0.55∗ (0.28) −0.56∗ (0.34)Administrative Control 0.14 (0.18) −0.18 (0.18)Training and Support 0.11∗ (0.06) −0.03 (0.07)Age −0.02 (0.07) 0.11 (0.07)Tenure −0.14 (0.09) −0.06 (0.09)Education −0.15 (0.10) −0.04 (0.10)

Model chi-square 17.31∗ 17.82∗

Degree of freedom 10 10N 269 269

Two hundred and ninety-five employees returned their questionnaires, but 26 were deleted from our final analysesdue to missing values for independent variables.

∗ p≤ .10.∗∗ p≤ .01.

is partially supported by our results (again, however only at the .1 level). This finding suggeststhat employer-provided training and technical support has a positive relationship with greaterInternet use.

5. Conclusion

This study sheds some light on how government employees use the Internet to carry outtheir day-by-day work. Our hypotheses explore how individual preferences, group influences,and administrative factors may shape Internet usage at work. While our survey only coverslocal government employees—mostly middle management types—in Southern California, itshows that the vast majority of these employees use the Internet to download information andsoftware, and for communications for work and professional development. Our survey alsodocuments a widespread non-work-related use of the Internet in the public workplace.

Our logistic analyses show that individual acceptance of the Internet and perceived impor-tance of the Internet to the work group’s mission have significant impacts on greater use ofthe Internet to perform work, and to reduce Internet use for personal purposes. Training andtechnical support also have a significant effect on increasing Internet use in work. Public man-agers would be well advised to create a supportive workplace by providing adequate Internettraining and technical support to improve employees’ acceptance and use of the Internet toperform their work (Adler & Borys, 1996; Frenkel, Korczynski, Donoghue, & Shire, 1995;Garson, 1995; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991; Weick, 1990).


Notes

1. This paper reports our preliminary findings from a large project to study the role andimpacts of information technology in public organizations. For more information, pleaseseeGrant and Ting (2002), andTing and Grant (2000b).

2. We sent our questionnaire to the entire membership of the association, excluding allconsultant and academic members. A follow-up letter was sent out within 4 weeks after.

3. They received on average 13 email messages everyday.

Appendix A. Variable definitions and measurement specifications

Variable name Definition

Dependent variablesInternet Usage-Work 5-point scale measuring frequency of Internet usage to

perform day-by-day work by employees (higher scoresrepresent greater use)

Internet Usage-Personal 4-point scale measuring frequency of Internet usage forpersonal purposes by employees (4 = daily, 3 = 2–3days/week, 2 = monthly, 1 = never)

Individual variablesReplacement Feeling 5-point scale responses to the statement, “Required use of the

Internet in many of your tasks increases feelings ofvulnerability to replacement” (5 = strongly agree,4 = somewhat agree, 3 = not sure, 2 = somewhat disagree,1 = strongly disagree)

Equity Feeling 5-point scale responses to the statement, “In your work group,since you began using the Internet, your workload remains faircompared to others” (5 = strongly agree, 1 = strongly disagree)

Internet Use Acceptance Composite score of 5-point scale responses to statements,“Overall you find the Internet easy to use” and “You find theInternet useful in doing your jobs” (higher scores representstronger acceptance of Internet usage)

Group variablesGroup Internet Use 1 = employees responded that they strongly identify with their

work group, and everybody in their group uses the Internet;0 = otherwise

Important to Group 1 = employees responded that they strongly identify with theirwork group, and think Internet usage is critical to theirgroup’s mission; 0 = otherwise


Appendix A (Continued)

Variable name Definition

Organizational variablesAdministrative Control Two-item constructed scale where: 2 = employees answered

“yes” to two statements, “Has your supervisor or someone hasroutinely monitored Internet usage in your work group?” and“Has your supervisor established performance standards forwork performed using the Internet?”; 1 = employees answered“yes” to one of the above statements; 0 = employees answered“no” to both statements

Training and Support Two-item constructed scale where: Likert-type scale based on4-point response to two statements, “How much Internettraining provided or sponsored by your employer that youhave received?” and “How much technical support does youremployer provide for Internet users?” (higher scores representmore administrative supports to help employees master theirInternet skills)

Demographic variablesAge Age (interval measurement in years)Tenure Number of years with current employer (interval

measurement)

Education Highest education level completed (ordinal measurement bydegree)

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