Responsive E-government in China: A way of gaining public support

A growing body of research suggests that officials in China are highly responsive to citizens' requests on e -government platforms. However, our understanding of the effects of such responsiveness in China remains limited due to the lack of research from a citizen perspective. By conducting two online survey experiments involving 205 residents of Hubei Province, China, we examined the features of government responses in the e -government context that affect citizens' perceptions of government performance. The findings show that even a delayed and unhelpful response can have a positive impact on citizens' satisfaction with the government. This effect is mediated by the level of perceived government responsiveness. Moreover, citizens are affected more by the usefulness than by the timeliness of the government's responses. These results suggest that by combining the broad implementation of e-government with a higher response quality, the Chinese government can establish a new means of gaining public support.