Why Digital Technology Increases the Administrative Burdens of Citizens? A Systematic Literature Review

The rapid advances in digital technology, particularly the internet and mobile devices, offer the potential for more efficient and convenient delivery of public services (Gil-Garcia et al., 2018). In theory, digitization should reduce citizens' administrative burdens by enabling real-time online interactions and minimizing face-to-face bureaucratic encounters, thereby lowering learning, psychological, and compliance costs(Barnes and Petry, 2021;Wang and Ma, 2022). However, practical applications of digital technology are often limited by political, organizational, individual, and technical factors (Veiga et al., 2016; Lolich et al., 2019; Reissig et al., 2022), leading to increased difficulties for citizens to access services (Linos et al., 2022; Peeters, 2023). Consequently, digital environments may impose additional time and psychological and economic costs on citizens, exacerbating their administrative burdens (Madsen et al., 2022; Peeters and Widlak, 2023).

Against the backdrop of the digital transformation of public services, the following question emerges: why has digital technology paradoxically increased the administrative burdens of citizens? What are the influencing factors and underlying mechanisms? To address these questions, this article systematically reviews and critically analyzes the relevant literature.

The generation of digital administrative burdens is shaped by complex factors across three main dimensions: citizens, the government, and technology. For citizens, differences in information literacy, the prevalence of digital devices, and communication abilities contribute to increased burdens in interacting with digitized public services. Government factors include political decision-making and street-level bureaucratic actions that intentionally heighten the administrative burdens while remaining unaffected by the positive aspects of technology. Technological factors focus on supply capacity and operational logic, with inadequate technological resources, data standardization issues, data errors, and legal overregulation exacerbating the burdens on citizens.

Digital technology impacts administrative burdens through several pathways. Inherent issues such as the instability of information systems, difficulties in standardization, and data quality problems directly increase the burdens. Technology indirectly exacerbates these burdens by altering government practices, such as enforcing automated services and prioritizing security over convenience. Additionally, the complexity of the new technologies increases cognitive stress and learning costs for citizens, extending the time for service acquisition and adding psychological and time-related burdens. Lastly, digital platforms shift more roles and responsibilities to the citizens, with profit-driven private-sector partners and intermediary organizations further intensifying the administrative burdens.

Future research should be broadened by gathering comprehensive and detailed data from diverse samples and cases and emphasizing quantitative methods to directly quantify the administrative burdens. This approach will accurately measure those changes that are due to digitization, clarify the causal relationships among the variables, and produce more universally applicable findings. Additionally, research should consider the construction of digital government within varied social, economic, and cultural contexts to understand how these factors affect citizens' digital administrative burdens. The establishment of theoretical links between administrative burdens and e-government studies and exploration of factors beyond citizens, government, and technology are essential. This includes introducing new variables or dynamically adjusting the existing variables, such as the impact of the emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. Finally, to foster the healthy development of digital government, research should focus on overcoming the obstacles to the application of digital technology by understanding the mechanisms driving the digital administrative burdens.