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Top1. Introduction
The public expectation in Singapore has been rising over the last few decades for more inclusive and meaningful participation in government policy making and implementation. In order to have a sustainable relationship between the public and government, it is important to provide better policy formulation, better service delivery, and better outcomes (Yan, 2016). In a crisis such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, it is crucial to foster constant engagement with the public to ease anxieties and ensure transparency, participation, and collaboration for example in the area of contact tracing (World Health Organisation, 2020). Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform public policy making and services delivery thus generating substantial value for the public.
AI applications are helping to reshape many industries ranging from healthcare to customer service (Akkaya & Krcmar, 2019). Since the start of 21st century, there is a clear indication that AI will replace most of the routine functions that need execution by humans (Makridakis, 2017). The smartphone penetration rate in Singapore has reached about 78 percent, indicating that it is a leading country for the use and engagement of smartphone (Source: Statista, 2019). With this high usage of smartphone users and the planned roll out of 5G (The Infocomm Media Development Authority, 2020), adoption of AI technology through a mobile application (App) could potentially improve public engagement and processing of public feedback. Potential benefits range from the improvement of services such as cost savings, reduction of employees’ workload, increase of productivity, to intangible benefits such as higher citizens’ satisfaction.(Androutsopoulou et al., 2019).
This research focused on the following question: what are the key factors influencing the adoption intention of AI for public engagement in Singapore? There are significant research gaps in the areas of adoption of AI in the public sector. AI applications are relatively new in the public sector and are employed as innovative pilot projects, with limited research done on the subject (Wirtz, Weyerer, & Geyer, 2019). There is still little knowledge about the overall potential and types of AI applications for governments. A gap exists between citizens’ expectations and the government’s abilities to apply AI within the scope of its limitations and challenges (Mehr, Ash, & Fellow, 2017). There is insufficient information to ascertain the citizen’s willingness to support and use AI applications at public administrations in the future (Akkaya & Krcmar, 2019). Hence, in line with the Singapore government’s Digital Government Blueprint (DGB) vision to leverage AI (Smart Nation and Digital Government Office, 2020), there is a need to study the adoption intention of such AI applications.
The next section will be a review of the related literature in order to develop a better understanding of the variables involved and their relation to the dependent variable. Section three will explain the proposed research model and hypotheses development for each of the identified variable, while section four will describe the data collection, analysis and discussion of the findings. Section five will elaborate on the implications for research and practice. Finally, the limitations, scope for future research and conclusion are stated at the end of the paper.