In the era of information age, electronic voting (e-voting) is expected to work as a mechanism to realize advanced democracy. In terms of technology and social infrastructure required to adopt e-voting system, South Korea, an information technology po...
In the era of information age, electronic voting (e-voting) is expected to work as a mechanism to realize advanced democracy. In terms of technology and social infrastructure required to adopt e-voting system, South Korea, an information technology power, is not behind any country that has already adoptede -voting. Korea's e-voting projects launched during the Participatory Government, an attempt to introduce e-voting in public elections, have not made much progress due to lack of trust in e-voting system, lack of social consensus and disapproving attitude of politicians and civic organizations.
In order to establish impact factors in adopting e-voting in public elections, this study polled politicians (congressmen, local councilmen), government officials and the general public and analyzed the survey to establish the dynamics of multi-dimensional aspects of policy acceptance, using the analytical framework that combines rational behavioral theory and technology acceptance model. For these purposes, this study classifies e-voting policy impact factors into politico-social aspects and technological aspects, identifies the magnitude and pathways of impacts to establish differences between them, thus exploring the implications for development and implementation of e-voting policy.
To achieve the research objectives, this study organized a questionnaire to test the study model and conducted an empirical research using the survey results. The survey data used in this study are from three categories of subjects: politicians, government officials and the general public. The statistical tools used in analyzing the data were SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 19.0, and the analytical results are as summarized below.
First, according to the analytical results of technological statistics on selected variables of acceptance factors of e-voting, independent variables such as political tendency, computer literacy, mobile literacy and innovative tendency turned out to have significant impact on the mediator variables such as political trust, judicial trust, technological trust and cognition of usefulness of e-voting. Institutional trust (political trust, judicial trust), based on the analytical results using the data collected from the survey on the trust in the leaders of major state agencies, shows that, while judicial trust (trust in the Court, Constitutional Court and National Election Commission) was relatively high, political trust (trust in the President, the National Assembly and political parties) was low. Moreover, when compared with the trust in the ministries of the national government, the president and local government entities, the trust in the prosecution, police, the National Assembly and political parties turned out to be low. Technological stability and social consensus were suggested as prerequisite conditions for the institutionalization of e-voting,
Second, for politicians and government officials, the more conservative they are in their political attitude, the higher their trust in the politics and judiciary; the more liberal they are, the higher their willingness to accept e-voting. In addition, liberal politicians and government officials showed higher willingness to accept e-voting due to their higher technological trust but showed lower judicial trust in the judgment and operation agent and lower political trust in the politicians.
Third, considering the relatively high trust in the National Election Commission, the operation agent of e-voting, it is fair to say that fairness and accountability, the key stones of e-voting operation, are already in place.
Fourth, while many people responded that touch-screen voting system was easy to use, they also responded that it would be more effective to adopt the internet or mobile voting system. In addition, concerning the adoption of e-voting, it turned out that they thought it more desirable to adopt an e-voting system tailored for the Korean environment on the basis of technological stability and social consensus.
Fifth, for the purpose of increasing voter turnout, the majority of the population was in favor of combining both conventional paper voting and an e-voting system and chose touch-screen voting system as acceptable. Concerning the main cause of decreasing voter turnout, they chose political distrust and apathy; concerning the measures to increase voter turnout, they chose better-qualified candidates and enhanced civic awareness.
Sixth, of all the population (politicians, government officials and the general public), the higher the level of computer literacy, it turned out the higher their level of cognition of usefulness of e-voting; for politicians, the higher their level of mobile literacy, the higher their level of technological trust; for the general public, the higher their level of mobile literacy, the higher their level of cognition of usefulness of e-voting.
Seventh, for politicians, the more innovative they are, the higher their trust in technology, cognition of usefulness, political and judicial trust; for government officials, the more innovative they are, the higher their trust in technology, cognition of usefulness, political and judicial trust and willingness to accept e-voting; for the general public, the more innovative they are, the higher their cognition of usefulness and political trust.
Eighth, for politicians, the higher their technological trust and cognition of usefulness, the higher their willingness to accept e-voting; for government officials, the higher their judicial and technological trust and cognition of usefulness, the higher their willingness to accept e-voting; for the general public, the higher their political trust and cognition of usefulness, the higher their willingness to accept e-voting.
Ninth, regarding the pathway that political tendency have impact on the willingness to accept e-voting, for the general public, political tendency showed to have mediation effect, while there seem to be no mediation effect on the part of politicians and government officials. Concerning the pathway that political tendency has impact on the willingness to accept e-voting, for government officials, political tendency showed its mediation effect. Concerning the pathway that political tendency has impact on the willingness to accept e-voting, it turned out that technological trust has on mediation effect on all the politicians, government officials and the general public; regarding the pathway between literacy in information technology and the willingness to accept e-voting, technological trust showed mediation effect for politicians only. Concerning the pathway between the innovativeness and the willingness to accept e-voting, technological trust showed mediation effect for politicians and government officials, while showing no such effect for the general public. Regarding the pathway between the literacy in information technology/innovativeness and the willingness to accept e-voting, it turned out that cognition of usefulness has mediation effect.
Theoretical implications based on the findings of this study may be summarized as below.
First, the character of e-voting initiative is not simply a part of e-government policy but a state constituting initiative with strong political nature, thus e-voting acceptance model requires a new consolidated model that includes policy acceptance factors, because it cannot be explained by the conventional technology acceptance model.
Second, there were significant differences in the e-voting acceptance factors between politicians and the general public, and so were in their pathways. These facts can be the evidence that shows the validity of this study that analyzed the implementation e-voting initiative in two-dimension of voluntary acceptance and involuntary acceptance. These facts also imply that, while the policy implementation process of politicians can be examined along the continuity of policy decision, for the general public, their compliance with a policy depends ultimately on their trust in politics.
Finally, policy implications from this study may be summarized as below.
First, for politicians, major impact factors in accepting e-voting turned out to be political tendency of conservatism and liberalism, technological trust and their cognition of usefulness. For this reason, in order to achieve politicians’ consensus on accepting e-voting, it is important to achieve trust in the technological stability of e-voting, social consensus on the usefulness of e-voting and trust in the agency in charge of operation of e-voting system.
Second, for the general public, their political trust (president, National Assembly and political parties) and cognition of usefulness of e-voting (its convenience, easiness and trust in the expectation on increased voter turnout) turned out to be decisive factors in accepting e-voting. For this reason, it is important to realize trustworthy political culture. In addition, for the formation of social consensus and adoption of e-voting, it is absolutely necessary to publicize advantages of e-voting, including voter convenience (location of voting place and flexibility of voting time), so that people could feel the usefulness of e-voting.