THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED USEFULNESS, SOCIAL INFLUENCE, INTERNET SELF-EFFICACY AND COMPATIBILITY ON USERS’ INTENTIONS TO ADOPT E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGY IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY ENVIRONMENT: INVESTIGATING THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF CULTURAL VALUES AT INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL

 

Khaled M. S. Faqih

Dr., Al al-Bayt University, Jordan, km_faqih@aabu.edu.jo

 

Abstract

The current study has been inspired by two significant issues: (1) The proliferation of e-technologies such as e-learning have dramatically motivated global research intended to advance our knowledge of the dynamics of these technologies in varying environmental contexts and settings, and (2) the importance of cultural values at individual-level analysis in technology adoption merits greater level of attention and interests from researchers and practitioners, particularly in relation to developing country contexts. This study intends to investigate the significance of highly influential adoption factors acknowledged as relevant in prior literature in predicting user’s behavioral intention to adopt new technologies. These potentially important factors were drawn from highly popular technology adoption and social theories including perceived usefulness (Technology Acceptance Model), social influence (Theory of Planned Behavior), Internet self-efficacy (Social Cognitive Theory) and perceived compatibility (Innovation Diffusion Theory). Further, the present study examines the moderating impact of both individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural dimensions at individual-level on the hypothesized relationships linking these highly influential adoption factors with behavioral intention to adopt e-learning environment in order to facilitate and enhance learning processes and in an effort to achieve value maximization and waste minimization requirements in the context of e-learning technology. The empirical data which consists of 262 valid datasets was collected from undergraduate university students in Jordan via self-administered paper-based questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed from previously accepted and validated a set of measurements items. The empirical data was numerically assessed and analyzed with the help of WarpPLS 5.0. The findings of this study demonstrate that perceived usefulness, social influence, Internet self-efficacy and perceived compatibility are important predictors of individuals’ behavioral intention to adopt e-learning technology. Further, the current findings provide adequate empirical evidence to support all hypotheses involving moderating effects with one exception whereby both individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural values have little statistical significance on the relationship linking perceived usefulness with behavioral intention to adopt e-learning technologies. Interestingly, the proposed model explains a substantial amount of variance (63%) which signifies that the model fits the data well. Research findings are discussed and contribution to theory and practice are presented.

Keywords: adoption, e-learning, culture, WarpPLS, Jordan