The mediating role of ICT regulation on the effects of ICT access and ICT use on e-participation: Evidence from structural equation modelling and necessary condition analysis

Recently, governments have been using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to provide platforms for citizen engagement and involvement through e-participation. This paper aims to explore the drivers behind e-participation in a global context. The discourse on e-participation in the information systems literature has concentrated on how technology access generally serves as a factor of citizens’ e-participation. Specifically, ICT access and ICT usage have largely been examined as disparate critical success factors in e-participation even though ICT access and ICT usage are complementary factors whose presence are mutually exclusive in achieving effective e-participation. Relying on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theory and secondary data for 121 countries for 2018, we adopt a multi-method approach by combining partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to understand the direct effects of ICT access, ICT usage and ICT regulation on e-participation. We also explore the mediating effects of ICT regulation in driving ICT access and ICT usage towards citizen e-participation. Our results show that ICT usage and ICT regulation significantly contribute to e-participation. ICT regulation was found to significantly mediate the nexus between ICT usage and e-participation. From our combined use of PLS-SEM and NCA, we present how researchers and policymakers can identify the factors that are critical and can result in the best possible outcome. Our study contributes to extensions of the TOE theory by drawing on constructs from the theory to identify critical factors that determine e-participation in a global context.