Drivers and barriers affecting usage of e-Customs — A global survey with customs administrations using multivariate analysis techniques

The adoption of e-Customs platforms to simultaneously ensure regulatory compliance and to facilitate trade is a major strategic issue for governments and customs administrations worldwide. It ensures a more cost-efficient usage of resources while preserving a smooth flow of goods across international borders. Hence, customs administrations are challenged to favor the introduction of IT systems that may enhance the ability to improve information sharing with the business sector, as well as with other governmental agencies. This is often not a straightforward process. As many experts point out, e-Government development projects fail commonly due to the lack of thorough understanding of administration requirements as well as barriers for implementation. Hence, the purpose of this study is to understand what factors enable or hinder the exploitation of e-Customs platforms. By means of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), a theoretical framework is developed to identify drivers and barriers for usage of e-Government/e-Customs platforms. Thereby, a survey instrument was developed and data was collected in occasion of a World Customs Organization (WCO) Annual Council meeting, which was joined by around 400 customs delegates and officers from 178 WCO member administrations. A total of 94 questionnaires have been collected and analyzed, which gives an approximate response rate of 23% (46% considering only the 178 member administrations). The analysis of data has been performed by a combination of multivariate techniques and ANOVA. Results show that factors like cost-savings and ease of use significantly influence the usage of e-Customs platforms. On the contrary, cost-efficiency and usefulness of e-Customs platforms have no significant impacts. From the perspective of barriers preventing adoption, this paper identifies two main factors: 1) technical constraints and costs and 2) quality and trust. Both these factors significantly influence adoption of information sharing, in the context of business-customs communication.