During the construction process of an e-government project, the acquirer commonly participates in aseries of development activities handled by suppliers. These participation activities have a significant influence onthe project performance. However, when planning for participation activities that rely on subjective intuition thisraises a tense claim on policymakers’ capacity, and can arouse controversy. To this end, the study proposes analternative approach, which relies on objective knowledge from historical data. The study collects 25 completedChinese e-government projects, leverages on a variable-selection-based regression analysis, and establishes a modelof quantitative relationship between the acquirer’s participation and project performance. The model has goodmathematical properties. The study further examines the model’s degree of conformity to common experiences ofproject managers. Taking all the comparison and analysis in consideration, the study proposes several suggestionsfor acquirers in Chinese e-government projects.