THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS E-DEMOCRACY

Empirical Evidence from the Viennese Population

Alexander Prosser, Yan Guo, Jasmin Lenhart

University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna

Augasse 2-6 A-1090 Vienna

Keywords: e-democracy, e-voting, e-participation, empirical survey.

Abstract: Systems for citizen participation have become technically feasible and are currently being developed. But

what are the preferences of the citizens and which factors determine their attitude towards e-democracy?

This paper reports the results of a representative survey in the Viennese population investigating the attitude

towards e-democracy, the relationship to the respondents’ current Internet usage and possible motives for e-

democracy.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Internet is increasingly used for citizen

participation and voting processes (for an

Introduction, see Prosser and Krimmer 2003, 2004).

The authors of such systems in many cases

implicitly assume that (i) citizens are interested in

electronic participation via the Internet and (ii) that

such systems are attractive to more or less all groups

of the population. Based on a representative survey

conducted among the Viennese population, this

paper attempts to clarify whether the population

actually is interested in electronic citizen

participation, whether this attitude depends on

demographic factors and where citizens would

prefer to use such systems. The questionnaire

distinguished between e-voting (e-elections,

referenda etc.) and e-participation (e-discussion and

exchange of opinions).

The survey was conducted in interviews with 300

persons over 15 years of age; the respondents were

representative for the Viennese population in terms

of age, sex and educational background following

the data published by Statistics Austria (2001); a X

test for goodness of fit was performed on a 95%

significance level.

Two main hypotheses of independence were used as

a starting point:

H1: The attitude towards e-voting and e-

participation, resp. is independent of sex, age and

education.

H2: The perceived advantages and disadvantages of

electronic democracy are independent of sex, age

and education.

2 ATTITUDE AND

DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS

2.1 Attitude

Figure 1 shows the attitude towards e-voting and e-

participation. It is obvious that a considerably higher

number of respondents are interested in e-voting

(44% are either strongly interested or interested)

than in e-participation (14%).

Figure 1: The attitude towards e-participation and

e-voting.

e-participat ion

8 2,7 2,7 2,7

34 11,3 11,3 14,0

69 23,0 23,0 37,0

52 17,3 17,3 54,3

137 45,7 45,7 100,0

300 100,0 100,0

very interested

interested

moderately

hardly

not interested

Total

Valid

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumu lative

Percent

e-voting

54 18.0 18.0 18.0

78 26.0 26.0 44.0

60 20.0 20.0 64.0

29 9.7 9.7 73.7

79 26.3 26.3 100.0

300 100.0 100.0

very interested

interested

moderately

hardly

not interested

Total

Valid

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative

Percent

201

Prosser A., Guo Y. and Lenhart J. (2006).

THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS E-DEMOCRACY - Empirical Evidence from the Viennese Population.

In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - SAIC, pages 201-204

DOI: 10.5220/0002458202010204

 SciTePress

Before analysing the motives for this (lack of)

interest let us first explore its demographic

distribution. Pairwise X

tests for independence are

performed with sex, age and educational background

on the one hand and the interest in e-participation

and e-voting on the other. To facilitate the tests and

to avoind too small frequencies in some categories,

the variable age was summarized in 3 categories

(15-29, 30 - 49 and 50+), and the interest in e-

voting/e-participation was combined to three

categories (very interested/interested, moderately,

hardly/not interested). The results of the pair wise X

tests (95% significance level) for independence are

summarized in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The attitude towards e-participation/e-voting and

demographic factors.

The positive attitude towards e-voting is largely

independent of demographic factors, only age

proved to be a significant factor: Respondents over

50 years of age were significantly less interested in

e-voting, however, even in this age group one third

of the respondents are interested which runs against

the opinion that the older generation does not adopt

Internet services. With an increasing general Internet

penetration and over time this rate can be expected

to rise even higher. The picture is completely

different with e-participation. Not only is the general

attitude far less favourable, it is also strongly

fragmented: Summarizing, well educated, young

male citizens are interested in e-participation.

Possible explanations may be the unawareness of the

means and areas of application of e-participation,

time constraints, a preference to participate in

decision making rather than discussion and

deliberation. Hence, hypothesis H1 has to be

rejected for e-participation, but can be maintained

insofar as the interest in e-voting is independent of

sex and educational background.

2.2 Perceived Advantages and

Disadvantages

Respondents were also asked about the perceived

advantages and disadvantages of e-democracy.

Starting from the hypothesis of independence, a

series of pairwise X

tests with sex, age and

education yielded the significant deviations, where

independence had to be rejected as depicted in

Figure 3 (95% significance level). None of the

perceived advantages/disadvantages showed any

significant dependence on the sex of the respondent.

The most important advantage as perceived by the

respondents is the independence of place and time,

where agreement is particularly high in the “middle”

age group and with a higher educational

background. A possible explanation could be the

increased professional (and also private) mobility of

the respondents which makes easier access to

democratic decision making interesting to them.

“Access to political information” scored second.

Interestingly only 17.3% are interested in obtaining

their information from politicians, 20% from other

citizens and 21.7% from experts (45.3% no

response). Neither this question nor “cost cuts in

public administration” showed any significant

deviations. The latter seems to indicate the high

awareness for public administrative expenditure in

general and for the cost-saving effects for e-

government in particular. It may also indicate that

little awareness exists for the costs of, for instance,

an e-voting system, which would cause additional

costs as the conventional paper-based election

system must remain in place. “Increased direct

democracy” scores 50% over all age groups but is

particularly strong in the age group of 15-29 (65%

(strong) agreement) thereby renouncing the

prejudice that this age group would not be interested

in politics. One may conclude that the interest may

be there, but the instrument to voice adequately this

interest is also needed.

Of all disadvantages a possible digital divide scores

highest; interestingly, the digital divide does not

seem to be automatically linked to a social divide

which scores much lower. The divide between

Internet “haves” and “have nots” as perceived by the

respondents does not seem to be uniquely defined by

income and social status. It is obvious that other

factors play a role as well (possibly age). The fear of

a digital divide is pronounced in the age groups of

30-49 and 50+. Possible manipulations and the

corruption of anonymity also play an important role

and may serve as an indicator of the increasing

awareness of the inherent dangers of e-democracy,

here particularly e-voting, systems. It is interesting

to note, that none of the perceived advantages was

gender-specific or (except for independence of place

and time) education-specific, which fits in with the

result that the positive attitude towards e-voting is

independent of these factors as well.

e-voting e-participation

Sex

Not significant

7.6 % of female and 21.1% of

male respondents (strongly)

interested

Age

52.5% and 52% (strongly)

interested in age groups 15-29

and 30-49, resp. 32%

interested in a

rou

>50

17.5% of 15-29 year old, 16.3%

of 30-49 year old and 9.8% of >

50 year old respondents are

(

stron

interested

Education

Not significant

12.7% (grammar and high

school), 7.5% (apprenticeship),

22.4% (college), 10.5% (high

school exit exam) and 23.3%

(university) are (strongly)

interested

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Figure 3: Perceived advantages/disadvantages by age and

education

In terms of the advantages/disadvantages listed, the

hypothesis of independence stated in H2 can hence

be accepted for sex and (except for independence of

time and place) also for education. It has to be

rejected for age: Nearly all perceived dangers and

disadvantages are stronger in the higher age groups,

particularly the fear of manipulation due to

electronic media, whereas increased direct

democracy is particularly perceived by the lower age

groups.

3 INTERNET USAGE AND

ATTITUDE

Respondents were also asked about the current

Internet usage of the respondents, whereby the fields

of usage suggested to the respondent fall into the

well-known categories of information – feedback –

transaction (cf. Prosser et al. 2004 and the literature

quoted therein). The assignment to an explanatory

factor, however, was not done a priori, but is the

result of a factor analysis yielding profiles of usage

(for an introduction, see Gaensslen and Schubö

1976). The type of factor analysis is the same as in

the last section. The rotated component matrix

yielded the factors shown in Fig. 4 (left-hand side).

Services included in several profiles were eliminated

and the analysis was re-run. In this second analysis

(not shown in Fig. 4), also e-Media was present in

several factors and was eliminated as well. A final

run yielded the factors depicted in Fig. 4 (right-hand

side).

The three remaining profiles can be interpreted as

„transaction user with e-mail“ (1), “browser” (2) and

“participation and entertainment user” (3). In the

following step, these profiles are related to the

preferences expressed for e-voting/e-participation as

shown generally in Fig. 1 to analyze, how current

Internet usage influences the attitude towards e-

democracy. The attitude thereby becomes the

dependent variable and the factors for Internet usage

are the independent variable. The method chosen for

this step was logistic regression, as its data

requirements in relation to model complexity are

relatively parsimonious, particularly as compared to

log linear models (Andreß et al. 1997, Norusis

2001). Since logistic regression requires the

dependent variable to be dichotomous, the responses

as depicted in Fig. 1 were re-coded in that strong

interest and interest was classified as “interested”,

all other values in the Likert scale were classified as

“not interested”. Two models were established, one

with the interest in e-voting and in e-participation as

dependent variable, resp.

The model measures the probability of the

dependent variable to be either of the values listed

above as

−

with Z being the linear

combination

XBXBBZ ...

110

; the

independent variables

X are the factor values for

Internet usage in each individual data record.

The regression coefficients for all factors are

negative, which means that a low factor value – a

Likert value of 1 or 2, i.e., a frequent usage of the

respective Internet service – leads to a high

probability of the dependent event (“is

interested”).The results for e-voting are highly

significant, the Goodness of Fit in the classification

table would indicate a meaningful estimate. Hence,

the hypothesis of independence H3 can be rejected

for e-voting.

Results are mixed for e-participation; all regression

coefficients are negative, but only one of the factors

is also significant (Factor 2). Hence, it may be

concluded that intensive “browsing” (Factor 2 in

Fig. 4) leads to a positive attitude towards e-

participation; the same conclusion, however, cannot

be drawn for the other factors (which is rather

surprising in the case of factor 3, the “participation

and entertainment” user profile). Generally, H3

cannot be rejected for e-participation on these

grounds.

Advantage/disadvantage % (strong)

agreement

Age Education

Increased direct democracy 50.3% Strong agreement in 15-29

age group

Access to political

information

59.4%

Contribute ideas 48.3%

Efficient communication 39.7% Stronger agreement in

older age groups

Independence of place and

time

68.7% Extremely high agreement

in group of 30-49

Agreement massively

and positively correlates

with educational

background

Cost cuts in public

administration

57.0%

Manipulation 60.6% Very strong agreement in

group 50+

Anonymity corrupted 64.0%

Digital divide 69.0% Strong agreement in

groups 30-49 and 50+

Social divide 49.7% Same as above, but less

ronounced

Trivialisation of politics 45.7% Strong agreement in group

50+

THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS E-DEMOCRACY - Empirical Evidence from the Viennese Population

203

Component

1 2 3

Information retrieval for

specific topics

,651

E-media (eg.,

newspapers)

,573

E-mail ,639

Chat ,849

Discussion (eg.,

newsgroups, fora)

,692

Entertainment (eg.,

music download)

,825

Online shopping ,755

Online banking ,835

Homepages of public

authorities

,585 ,575

Homepages of political

parties

,798

Download of forms of

public authorities

,620 ,621

Political fora ,802

Citizen hotlines online ,623 ,606

Finanz-Online

(http://www.bmf.gv.at)

,750

Component

1 2 3

Information retrieval for

specific topics

,671

E-mail ,658

Chat ,869

Discussion (eg.,

newsgroups, fora)

,668

Entertainment (eg.,

music download)

,824

Online shopping ,795

Online banking ,857

Homepages of political

parties

,832

Political fora ,830

Citizen hotlines online ,760

Figure 4: Internet Usage Profiles.

4 SUMMARY

The results show that there is a strong interest in e-

voting, which is (i) independent of education and

gender, (ii) which is lower but still remarkably high

in the 50+ age group and (iii) which is considerably

higher than the interest in e-participation. Whatever

the reasons behind this difference, it clearly shows

which e-democracy activities and systems are to be

prioritized: Decision making rather than discussion

and deliberation. Respondents generally show a

positive disposition towards e-democracy, clearly

recognizing the advantages of Internet-based

systems. Fears of negative effects are clearly higher

among the higher age groups and mainly concern

corrupted voter anonymity, manipulation of

(election) results and – most prominently and in

spite of an increasing Internet penetration rate – a

possible digital divide. Interestingly, the wish for

direct democracy by digital means is high among the

younger age group, which might indicate a way to

interest these age groups in democratic processes.

A study conducted among the political leaders of the

30 larges cities and of the 9 federal provinces in

Austria, which is to complement the study presented

in this paper will reveal, whether the focus of the

political decision-makers matches the focus of the

population in this regard. It is also to reveal whether

the dis/advantages as perceived by the politicians

and citizens match. This will be subject to future

research.

REFERENCES

Prosser, A., Krimmer, R. (eds.), 2003. E-Democracy:

Technologie, Recht und Politik. Bericht des

Arbeitskreises e-Democracy der OCG, Vienna

Prosser, A., Krimmer, R. (eds.), 2004. Electronic Voting

in Europe - Technology, Law, Politics and Society.

Proceedings of the ESF TED Workshop on Electronic

Voting in Europe, P-47 GI-LNI Series

Statistik Austria, 2004. Viennese Population Statistics

2001, Statistical Surveys Section 14, the educational

data was taken from

http://www.statistik.at/gz/bildung.pdf (20.7.2004)

Prosser, A., Krimmer, R., 2004. Elektronische Demokratie

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von Tabellen und kategorialen Daten. Springer, Berlin

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