Information System Quality Judgment for Continued E-Government Use: Theorizing the Role of Positive and Negative Affect

Affect and emotions play an important role in how individuals form judgments. Yet, the literature on technological judgments has primarily relied on the cognitive belief perspective. By segregating emotions into positive and negative affect, we incorporate affect in addition to cognitions to understand what drives perceptions about IS quality and, specifically, e-government website quality. Grounding our discussion in the affect infusion model (AIM) and prospect theory, we examine the mechanisms through which positive and negative affect infuse into IS quality judgments. We also theorize that both positive and negative affect have a moderating role in the relationships between cognitions and IS quality perceptions. We tested the model via surveying e-government website users and found that affect had a significant direct role in how they judged IS quality. While negative affect significantly moderated the relationship between experienced usefulness and how individuals perceived the three IS quality measures (i.e., information quality, system quality, and service quality), positive affect did not moderate this relationship. Finally, we theorize about the differential role that affect has on how individuals perceive the three IS quality measures depending on their affect infusion potential. We conclude by discussing our study's theoretical and practical implications.