Gender difference in the continuance intention to e-file income tax returns in Pakistan

1. Introduction

E-governance is being successfully implemented and utilized in various countries around the globe which is not surprising owing to the variety of benefits that it offers to the governments and particularly the citizens (Chatfield & Migdadi, 2015; Floropoulos et al., 2010). However, the success of its implementation has not been as prominently evident in the developing countries as in the developed ones (Chaouali et al., 2016). Many researchers have and are still looking into the factors that act as the obstructions towards e-government adoption and usage in the developing world. Among the many identified citizen-level factors, the differences between groups of citizens in terms of demographic attributes such as gender, age, education, and other socioeconomic factors have also been investigated as reasons for low e-government adoption in developing countries (Belanger & Carter, 2009; Gupta et al., 2016; Hung et al., 2006; Kose, 2019; Reddick, 2005). This means that the e-government services are not adopted in a similar way by citizens belonging to different groups of a demographic attribute. The present study focuses on the differences in the usage of e-government services in Pakistan between the two groups of gender as only a few studies have investigated the issue of the existence of gender gap in the developing countries which could impede the acceptance, adoption and growth of e-government services in such countries (Alkhattabi et al., 2012; Gkorezis et al., 2012). Also, the previous studies investigating gender gap in terms of e-government usage have reported mixed findings with some of them reporting no significant difference between gender groups (Belanger & Carter, 2009; Colesca & Dobrica, 2008; Reddick, 2005; Moreno et al., 2013; Taipale, 2013) while others reporting that men are more frequent users of e-government services (Akman et al., 2005; Choudrie & Dwivedi, 2005; Venkatesh et al., 2014). Therefore, it is significant to find out whether the gender gap exists in e-government usage in Pakistan where the research in the area of e-government in general and gender gap in particular is scarce (Akram et al., 2019). To investigate the matter, the case of income tax e-filing service of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the main revenue collection agency of Pakistan was selected as it is one of the most important e-government services offered in Pakistan. The number of income tax filers for the last five years (2016–2020) as reported by FBR is presented in Table 1. It shows that the annual increase in the number of filers is quite low and fluctuating. The number has even reduced for the tax year/fiscal year 2020 with 1.8 million income tax return filers which falls short by 1.1 million or 37.93% from the previous year since the number of income tax return filers was 2.9 million in the tax year 2019. When compared with total population in the country i.e. around 220 million people, the situation appears even more dismal In a news report, Khan (2020) states that “in India, the ratio of return filing to the population is 5 pc, 58 pc in France and 80 pc in Canada. In Pakistan, it stood at nearly 0.02 pc”, which highlights the extremely low turnaround and thus the importance and urgency of the investigation of this matter by both researchers as well as the government entities of Pakistan. The inconsistent and/or negative growth rate in the number of filers in Pakistan means that the FBR’s tax e-filing service is not being used consistently and continuously by citizens of Pakistan. As stated above, overall the number of taxpayers in Pakistan has been quite small compared to the population of the country i.e. less than 1% of the population of Pakistan constitutes the active taxpayer group, and even in that majority are men (FBR, 2020), which indicates towards the gender gap in this field. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate continuance intention of citizens to use FBR’s income tax e-filing service in Pakistan with special reference to the existence of gender difference in the usage.

This section provides a review of the past literature regarding the gender gap in the e-government continuous usage intention. Research indicates that despite the efforts by the countries around the globe to introduce e-government services, the acceptance rate has been lower than expected (Urbina & Abe, 2017). One of the reasons for low acceptance highlighted by the past studies is the existence of digital divide. The term digital divide encompasses the inequality between/among different demographic and/or socioeconomic group(s) in terms of access, availability, usage capability, skills, and the actual usage of internet and communication technologies (ICTs) (Fuchs, 2008; Wilson, 2006). Previous research has majorly explored digital divide between countries e.g. developed vs. developing countries (Okunola et al., 2017). Developing countries usually face challenges in the development of the infrastructure of Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) (Vu, 2011) and therefore these countries are more prone to digital divide (Banihashemi & Rejaei, 2015). Lately, user preferences and interests have also been recognized as potential sources of digital divide (Choi & Park, 2013). Much of the previous research about digital divide was focused on the differences in general access of internet service and its usage (Hsieh et al., 2008). However, there have been only a few studies discussing the digital divide in the field of e-government services from the gender perspective, particularly from the developing countries context (Antonio & Tuffley, 2014). Gender gap is the difference in the acceptance of ICTs such as e-government services between gender groups. It is generally reported that women are less frequent users of ICTs than men especially in the developing countries (Antonio & Tuffley, 2014). The argument of gender gap in e-government usage is also based on the idea that men and women have different interests and preferences for the overall internet usage i.e. men prefer to use the internet for productive tasks, to search for news, exploring e-commerce websites or for entertainment purposes while women generally prefer to use internet for communication, socialization, or for seeking health related information (Jackson et al., 2001; Kennedy et al., 2003) and thus it applies to the e-government usage behavior as well where men are generally reported to be more frequent users of e-government services than women (Choi & Park, 2013; Goldfarb & Prince, 2008). Based on the grounds of interests and preferences, Choi and Park (2013) argues that for e-government services, women are more likely to be frequent users of services related to healthcare and/or education than men.

There are very few studies which have investigated the e-government adoption and usage intention from gender perspective and even those report mixed findings (Akman et al., 2005; Belanger & Carter, 2009; Choudrie & Dwivedi, 2005; Colesca & Dobrica, 2008; Reddick, 2005; Moreno et al., 2013; Taipale, 2013; Venkatesh et al., 2014). Akman et al. (2005) reported that gender gap in e-government usage was prevalent in Turkey. Similarly, Choudrie and Dwivedi (2005) found that men are more frequent users of e-government services than women in UK. Contrary to this Moreno et al. (2013) reported that e-government usage was similar between both genders in Spain In the same line, Taipale (2013) also reported that there was no gender difference in the e-government usage in Finland. Similarly, Gupta, Dasgupta, and Gupta (2008) did not find any gender difference in the e-government service usage by citizens in Jordon. Choi and Park (2013) indicate that in Korea there is no gender gap when it comes to the access to e-government services, however gender gap is prevalent in the usage of these services. Owing to the mixed results reported by the studies mentioned above and the prevailing gap in the body of knowledge regarding the existence and nature of digital divide in e-government services context in the developing countries (Al-Shboul et al., 2014; Okunola et al., 2017). Particularly the existence of gender gap (Alkhattabi et al., 2012; Gkorezis et al., 2012), it becomes even more significant to investigate this matter in a developing country like Pakistan, which will contribute to the digital divide (specifically gender gap) literature in e-government context from the perspective of developing countries. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 issued by World Economic Forum (WEF) states that Pakistan ranks the lowest (7 th ) within the South Asian region and third last (151 st ) among 153 total countries with a gender gap index score of 0.564. According to subindex rankings of 153 countries, Pakistan stands at 150 th rank in terms of gender gap in economic participation and opportunity with an index score of 0.327, 143 rd rank in terms of gender gap in educational attainment with an index score of 0.823, 149 th rank in terms of gender gap in health and survival with an index score of 0.946, 93 rd rank in terms of gender gap in political empowerment with an index score of 0.159. This means that millions of women in Pakistan still lag behind men in terms of economic empowerment including labor force participation and employment in leadership roles, access to health facilities, and attainment of primary, secondary and higher education (WEF, 2020) clearly indicating towards the generally prevailing gender gap in the country. Moreover, out of the total population of the developing countries like Pakistan, the proportion of women who are part of the labor force and earn income above the minimum threshold amount liable to income tax is generally very low (Joshi, 2017) since they do not get equal opportunities to get education and high-paying employment and are thus economically dependent on their male counterparts (Choudhry et al., 2019). Joshi (2017) also mentions that “women tend to perceive tax rates and administration as a greater burden than men do, and are usually less confident in dealing with tax officials. Combined with low levels of economic literacy prevalent in the informal economy, this impacts their ability to understand, engage with and benefit from revenue systems”. Therefore, owing to discussion about gender gap above the present study while taking the case of tax e-filing service in Pakistan, aims to find out the gender difference in the continuance usage intention and thus proposes the hypothesis stated below.

H1: There is a significant difference in the continuance usage intention of income tax e-filing between men and women in Pakistan

3. Methods

This section provides details about the research design and methods employed in the study. The present study is an empirical investigation employing the cross-sectional survey method. The survey data was collected from a total of 401 citizens of Pakistan who had experience of using FBR’s income tax e-filing service. The sample included professionals from government sector, academia and business professionals from multiple chambers of commerce and industry of Pakistan. The final sample included more males i.e. 76.1% (N = 305) than females i.e. 23.9% (N = 96) which is consistent with the gender gap found in the population i.e. in the active taxpayers list of FBR which constituted of 83.57% men and 16.43% women.1

The gender difference for continuance intention of citizens to use income tax e-filing service was tested by employing Welch’s t-test as it has no strict assumptions regarding the existence of homogeneity of variance and the equality of sample sizes across groups (Delacre et al., 2017) which were absent in the data of present study.

This section provides the results of the test of gender difference in continuance intention of citizens to use income tax e-filing service. However, before proceeding the reliability and validity of the adapted measurement tool was assessed.

This section provides the discussion of the findings in the light of prior literature and it also points out some of the limitations of the present study and directions for future studies.