E-Mail as an Official Communication Tool in Bahrain: Individual and Public Organization Perspectives

This research studies the acceptance of e-mail for communicating official messages among citizens in Bahrain. It also examines the relationships between citizens’ age, educational level, gender, occupation, and organization type and e-mail as an official communication channel. A descriptive and quantitative research approach was applied to test hypotheses pertaining to the idea of using e-mail as an official and reliable communication tool. The findings show that e-mail can be used as an official and reliable tool to communicate information between citizens and the government in Bahrain. The findings also show that e-mail will be more widely used when specific security requirements are met. Thus, reliable electronic mail can provide an advanced means of communication and enhance the recently developed e-Government program. This study contributes to existing research by proposing new construct for examining the acceptance of email as an official communication tool.