Virtual healthcare in the new normal: Indian healthcare consumers adoption of electronic government telemedicine service

Digital healthcare is in the spotlight due to the prevailing COVID-19 situation. To get the deeper understanding of the healthcare consumers' adoption of e-government telemedicine service (EGTMS), the present research extends the unified model of e-government adoption (UMEGA) with perceived severity, self-efficacy, and political trust. The extended UMEGA model is empirically validated with 452 valid Indian healthcare consumers' responses. The findings reported that performance expectancy, perceived severity, effort expectancy, and perceived risk significantly influenced Indian healthcare consumers' attitudes towards EGTMS. Further political trust showed significant influence over social influence. However, social influence is observed as non-significant. Furthermore, attitude, political trust and facilitating conditions significantly influenced individuals' behavioral intentions towards EGTMS and observed significant influence of self-efficacy on effort expectancy. This is the first study that reveals the critical factors of Indian healthcare consumers' behavioral intention towards EGTMS. With the upsurge in e-government healthcare services, the outcomes of the study will benefit stakeholders such as governmental agencies, marketers, public administrators, and healthcare professionals as they provide suitable strategic recommendations to design and implement e-government telemedicine services.