Using a Technology Acceptance Model To Investigate Academic Acceptance of the Internet

Abstract

Information Technology has long been a well-known research area, but this changed considerably when the Internet became prominent just over a decade ago. Many researchers have studied and proposed theories and models of Technology Acceptance in order to predict and explain user behaviour with technology to account for rapid change in both technologies themselves and their environments. Each theory or model has been proposed with different sets of determinants and moderators. More importantly, most of the research has been conducted in the U.S. Therefore, it is questioned whether the technology acceptance models and theories that have been developed, modified, and extended in the U.S. can be used in other regions such as South East Asia and more specifically in Thailand. It is questioned whether there might be other determinants and moderators that also play important roles in this specific environment. This research study has seven objectives, of which five have already been achieved. From the findings, despite the fact that academics hardly used the Internet (used a few times a month) for teaching in class and providing a personal Web-Base for facilitating teaching, they intended to use it more (a few times a week) in the future. On the contrary, at the time of the survey, they used the Internet rather often (five to six times a week) for enhancing teaching knowledge, searching information for their research, personal tasks, enhancing personal knowledge, and using email for personal contact. Significantly, no matter how often they currently used the Internet, they all intended to use the Internet more often in all type of tasks in the future. With respect to motivation to make full use of the Internet in their work, they not only ‘quite agree’ that if good facilities were available to support usage (e.g. good computer hardware and software, good communication network etc.) this would motivate them, but they also thought that their strong intentions for providing student contacts, the university’ policy to be Research Oriented and become an e-University in the future, also play an important role in motivating them to make full use of the Internet in their work. On the contrary, the availability of technicians and Internet training motivated them less. They also thought that using the Internet helped improve their professional practice (such as teaching in class, preparing teaching materials, research, and administrative tasks), and helped improve personal developments (such as improving their academic and personal knowledge) and helped improve their quality of working life (such as saving their expense e.g. searching Information from e-Journal and Websites and using email in communication with others). Nevertheless, in respect of improving quality of working life and helping them have more time for leisure and creative thinking, they simply ‘slightly agreed’. With these findings, it is interesting to investigate deeply about academics ’behaviour and intention. Five core constructs (determinants) were examined including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, self-efficacy, and facilitating conditions together with moderators such as gender, age, experience, and some cultural aspects of whether these constructs influenced academic’s behaviour. Survey research methodology (questionnaire and semi-structured interviews) were used to collect primary data from Business Schools in Thailand, and the survey yielded 455 usable questionnaires. Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS is also being used to analyse data and is expected to provide evidence to generate the Technology Acceptance Model that is both substantively meaningful and statistically well-fitting(Byrne 2001, 2006) . By generating the Technology Acceptance Model in accordance with the main research objectives, it is expected that the generated research model will have the power to explain/predict Internet acceptance and usage behaviour. A thorough understanding of the model may help practitioners to analyse the reasons for resistance toward the technology and would also help to take efficient measures to improve user acceptance and usage of the technology (Davis, 1989).