6. Agent-Based Simulation of Citizens’ Channel Choice of Public Services Based on Social Learning

Different from social network of practice that emphasizes relations among members with weak ties, community-based learning more focuses on the competence and practice of individuals connected by strong ties. With respect to the E-government service adoption, we assume that learning within communities is more common than that via social network. On the other side, the spread of information/knowledge on E-government might also influence the learning process, and further affect the adoption behaviour indirectly. Understanding such dynamic learning mechanism is crucial to the investigation of divergent citizens’ adoption behaviour of E-government services, thus potentially important to the evaluation and design of supporting policies as well. In order to investigate the influence of learning within communities that are composed of citizens with different characteristics, and to explore the effectiveness of supporting policies in a long-term perspective, agent-based modelling is applied. This model could enable the understanding of a wide range of possible adoption behaviours under different scenarios, and the exploration of to what extent the variant supporting policies are effective.