Barriers to the Digital-Based Environmental Accountability of Local Governments

Local governments (LGs) have been using new digital technology for environmental accountability to analyse and manage change for a decade (Ball in Acc Audit Account J 18:346–373, 2005 [15]). However, relatively few studies demonstrate the issues with digitalising local environmental accountability. Based on this gap, action research was carried out to give empirical evidence of both the problems and solutions in leveraging digital technology to enhance local governments’ environmental accountability. A local government with a water-related history downstream of an alluvial cone that collects river water and rainfall was chosen as a case study. Enucleating and adapting the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology’s main principles of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence, four LG representatives were interviewed in three focus group sessions. The action research’s phases—unfreezing (first and second focus group meetings), changing and refreezing (third focus group meeting)—were adopted to discuss the results. The work provides theoretical and practical insights. It contributes theoretically to the research on the use of digital technology to improve LG environmental accountability by addressing both any criticalities and practical solutions.