Impact of Gender and Nationality on Acceptance of a Digital Library an Empirical Validation of Nationality Based UTAUT Using SEM

8/6/2019 Impact of Gender and Nationality on Acceptance of a Digital Library an Empirical Validation of Nationality Based UTA

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VOL. 1, NO. 2, Oct 2010 E-ISSN 2218-6301

Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and I nformation Sciences

2009-2010 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org

Impact of Gender and Nationality on Acceptance of a Digital Library: An

Empirical Validation of Nationality Based UTAUT Using SEM

Rita Oluchi ORJIComputer Science Department

University of Saskatchewan, Canada

E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Electronic Library Systems (ELS) has become an inevitable part of educational institutions. Though millions of dollars are

spent building and developing these systems, research findings indicates that millions of potential users may still be ignoringthem. Consequently, different Technology Acceptance Models have been applied towards understanding the effect of various

factors on end users acceptance of Information Systems (IS). Genderhas been found to be an important factor and, as such, has

attracted a lot of attention from the research community. Our research, however, recognized the existence of a different cohort

group of users of ELS with different usage behavior not just based on genderbut also based on nationality and, therefore,

developed a Nationality Based UTAUT (NUTAUT) adapted from UTAUT to account for the effect of genderand nationality

on acceptance, simultaneously. Nationality was introduced based on the assumption that the UTAUT independent constructswill impact on acceptance and usage differently when moderated by genderand nationality simultaneously. The result obtained

from the analysis of data collected from 116 student participants provides support for NUTAUT by showing that the variousUTAUT constructs exert varying degree of effects when moderated by genderand nationality combined. It not only confirms

the NUTAUT robustness in predicting acceptance of both Male and Female Students (91% and 85% respectively) but also

determines the importance of each independent construct to each group, based on theirnationality and gender. Social Influence

was found to be significant for both international males and females while effort expectancy is a more significant factor forboth national males and females. This result indicated that the effect of gender on adoption and use of technology also differ

based on nationality. The results of the study are expected to assist in understanding the use of ELS across different cohort

groups in society, particularly those in different gender and nationality groups, and serve as a mechanism in guiding the

development of ELS, as well as in aiding policy formulation regarding ELS and IS design for schools, research, commercial

and work places. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used as the main technique for data analysis.

Keywords: Digital Library, Technology Acceptance, Information Retrieval, UTAUT Model, Structural Equation Model, Gender,Nationality.

1. INTRODUCTIONThere has been a continuous increase in investment

by various governmental and non-governmental

organizations in new information technology and tools for

effective operation and management. The U.S. Departmentof Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis state that as

much as 50% of all new capital investment is made on

information technology (IT) [1]. Consequently, Electronic

Library Systems (ELS) has become an inevitable part of

todays educational system; a qualitative library system candirectly or indirectly improve the quality of education. ELS

aims to acquire, store, organize and preserve information for

easy access and retrieval. Leedy [2] found out thatinformation seekers often need the assistance of a Librarian,

especially when the catalogues and guides were not useful.

In recognition of this, many attempts have been madetowards the establishment and improvement of the structure

of the library to achieve high degree of usefulness, easier

access and retrieval of information. This advancement gave

birth to the concept ofElectronic Library System (ELS) (also

referred to as Digital Library). Many Universities have

digitized their library systems. However, while many

resources have been devoted to developing these systems,library researchers have observed that digital libraries

remain underutilized [3] and if these systems are not widely

utilized, it will be difficult to obtain corresponding return oninvestments. Therefore, there is a clear need to identify and

compare factors that can affect ELS acceptance and use by

people from different cohort group especially people of

different nationality and genderso that information system

designers, school managers, library managers and others canformulate strategies to design systems that can be acceptable

by all (males, females, international, national).

It has been shown that women are significantly lessreceptive to IT than men and it is also agreed that

understanding the gender differences on the acceptance of

information technology will help in improving the overallquality of IS. Therefore, understanding the relationships

between gender related constructs like nationality will be

helpful in explaining why female students have lower

technology acceptance.

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http://www.cisjournal.orgThe importance of this type of research is further

underscored by United Nations recommendations:

...research institutions should, as appropriate, promote

research on the interrelationship between... gender and age[4].

As a result, the adoption and use of ELS ineducational and research institutes has become a topic of

broad interest to researchers and practitioners in

management.Morris et al [5] found that the effects of gender on

individual adoption and use of technology differ based on

age. Specifically, they found that gender differences intechnology perceptions is more pronounced among older

workers while there is unisex pattern of results among

younger workers and Wang et al [6] found that gendermoderated the effect of performance expectancy, effort

expectancy and self efficacy. In addition, the work by

Venkatesh et al. [7] examined the simultaneous effects of

age and gender. In this paper however, we argue that theeffect exerted by genderon the independent constructs willvary depending on whether the user is a national or

international student. International males will exhibit

difference usage behavior from national males and likewise

international females from national females. Consequently,we developed a NUTAUT adapted from UTAUT Model to

account for the simultaneous moderating effect of genderand Nationality on UTAUT model. This was motivated by

the observation that difference cohort groups of users

(national and international students) exhibit different use

behavior towards ELS based on not only gender but onnationality. Our research model not only predicts the

varying degrees of acceptance for each user groups but alsoshows the degree of importance of each independent

construct in determining acceptance for each group. The

study significantly contributes towards understanding theacceptance of ELS in Academic environments and can also

be useful to school managers, bank managers and other IS

designers that makes decision about IS that is used by peopleof different nationalities.

There have been significant advances in the

technical development of digital libraries in areas such asinformation storage, information retrieval, and system

integration, resulting in dramatic improvements in their performance. While many resources have been devoted to

developing these systems, library researchers have observedthat digital libraries remain underutilized [3]. Digital

libraries have received a lot of attention from researchers.

Neuman [8] in her naturalistic inquiry detailed some of the

difficulties 92 high school freshmen and sophomoredisplayed as they interacted with digital library databases.

Her data revealed basic difference between structures

inherent in database and the conceptual structure thatstudents bring to searching-differences so compelling that

they seriously hamper students independent use of these

resources (p.74). The students lack of understanding of the

organization of information hampered them from accessingthe appropriate information for their research. The studydemonstrated that information search has not become easier

with the advent of technology.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In

Section 2 we discuss the theoretical background of the study

while Section 3 presents our NUTAUT model. Section 4

highlights methods employed in our research and Section 5 presents the analysis of the result. Section 6 discusses our

finding followed by conclusions, limitations and

recommendations for future work.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND RELATED

WORK

This section provides the theoretical background

and related work in the area of digital library system,

technology acceptance theories, gender in technology

acceptance and UTAUT model.

2.1 Digital Library System

2.2 Technology Acceptance Theories

It is a common belief that introducing a newtechnology automatically results in service acceptance.

However, several research findings dispute this claim,

showing that there are several other factors that affect

technology acceptance [9]. Many IS researchers have

investigated various theories that could explain the

acceptance of information technology. These theoriesinclude; the technology acceptance model (TAM) by Davis

[10]; the theory of reasoned action (TRA) by Fishbein and

Ajzen [11]; the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by Ajzen,[12]. The TAM model is the most widely used and has

perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. as its

main elements. The model suggests that when users are presented with technology, perceived usefulness and

perceived ease of use influence their decisions about how

and when they will use the technology. The Perceived

Usefulness is defined as the degree to which a person

believes that using a particular system would enhance his orher job performance, while Perceived Ease of Use is

defined as the degree to which a person believes that using

a particular system would be free of effort [10]. Weapproached the adoption and discovery of critical factors

that affect adoption of ELS from the perspective of

technology acceptance.

2.3 Gender and Nationality in Acceptance and

Usage of Technology

Gender can be defined as the way members of the

two sexes are perceived, evaluated, and expected to behave.

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http://www.cisjournal.org[13]. Gender is a significant variable in explainingdifferential outcome in consumer behaviour research [14,

15]. There has been a limited amount of gender-based study

in information technology research [16, 17, 18]. However,the differences between men and women have been studied

in various contexts such as electronic mail [19], informationretrieval [18], e-learning [20], communication technologies

[21] and online purchasing behaviour [17].

Majority of the studies appear more favorably towards menthan women. Anandarajan et al. [22] stated that men are

more likely to access work pages than women. Nevertheless,

gender was not linked with individual factors such as ease ofuse, frequency of use and time usage. Gefen and Straub [16]

found that the perceptions of men and women vary. The

perceived social usefulness of email was found to be lowerwith males than females. Conversely, men perceived ease of

use higher than women. Nonetheless, the actual use of email

did not vary across gender. Venkatesh et al. [18] proposed

that gender would moderate the association betweenperceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjectivenorm on intention to use the technology. These factors were

more important for men than women [17].

Moreover, owning to the changes in the makeup

and diversity of the workforce, gender differences are becoming increasingly important in managing the

development and implementation of new technology ([19],[23]). As many have noted, gender and age are among the

most fundamental groups to which individuals can belong

and membership of such groups is likely to have a profound

influence on individual perceptions, attitudes, and

performance [24].

2.4 The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of

Technology (UTAUT) Model

Attempts to develop a model with correct and high

prediction of technology acceptance gave rise to as many as

eight models, which have received support in recentliterature. These models use different determinants in

investigating acceptance of technology. A comparison of the

determinants found in major acceptance and use models is

presented in [25, 37, 18, 7]. UTAUT model, as shown in

Figure 1, resulted from a study by Venkatesh [7] whosystematically compared the eight previous models and their

predictive factors. Determinants of acceptance in UTAUT

are: performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE),social influence (SI) andfacilitating conditions (FC) and the

model also integrates four moderating factors (gender, age,

Experience, and voluntariness) having varying influences on

the primary constructs. The definition of the UTAUTconstructs and moderators are given in Table 1 and 2

respectively. The combinations of the constructs and

moderating factors have increased the predictive efficiency

of acceptance to 70% this is a major improvement over the

previous TAM model rates (35%) (Venkatesh et al. [7]).

s

Table 1: UTAUT Components

Table 2: UTAUT Moderators

Moderator Description

Gender Gender roles have a strong psychologicalbasis and are enduring.

Age Age has an effect on attitudes.

Experience Deals with how long the user has used thesystem.

Voluntariness of

use

If usage is voluntary or mandated.

3. MODEL FORMULATION

This section summarizes the NUTAUT andproposed the hypothesis that guides this study.

Determinant Description

Performance

expectancy (PE)Degree to which an individual believes that usingthe system will help attain gains in job

performance.

Effort

expectancy (EE)The degree of ease associated with the use of thesystem.

Social influence(SI)

The degree to which an individual perceives thatimportant others believe he or she should use the

new system.

Facilitating

conditions (FC)The degree to which an individual believes thatan organizational and technical infrastructure

exists to support use of the system.Behavioral

Intention (BI)The measure of the likelihood of an individual toemploy the application.

Use BehaviorUB

This measures the acceptance of the technology.

Figure 1: UTAUT Model Venkatesh et al., [26]

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http://www.cisjournal.org3.1 Nationality Based UTAUT (NUTAUT)

Since the development of UTAUT model, it has

attracted attention of many scholars in IS research because

of its predictive efficiency of 70% this is a major

improvement over the widely used TAM model withpredictive capacity of 35% [26, 18]. The scholars [27, 28]

validated the model and others [26, 30, 37, 31] extended it in

different contexts, including multicultural studies [32], and

all found its constructs highly predictive [7]. This, inaddition to the fact that the moderating variables offer

flexibility to allow the introduction of new dimensions intothe model, was the major motivation for the use of UTAUT

model in the current investigation.

NUTAUT was adapted from UTAUT by introducing a newmodulating variable nationality as shown in Figure 2.

Nationality was introduced based on the assumption that theUTAUT independent variables PE, EE, SI will impact on BI

differently and BI with FC will also impact on UBdifferently when moderated by nationality. The definition of

these construct are given in Table 1 and Table 2.

PE

3.2 Hypotheses

The expectations are that the survey will provide

evidence of varying degree of acceptance by male and

female students and also prove that the independentvariables will affect acceptance at different degrees for

these groups. Four hypotheses have been postulated to

guide this study.It has been found that gender differences moderate

the effect of independent constructs on technology

acceptance and that it is more important for males [5, 33,

34, 35], we expect that performance expectancy related to

technology usefulness and its influence on acceptance willbe more important for international and national males than

their female counterpart, therefore, resulting in greater

influence on behavior intention in predicting ELS adoption.

Again, Examining social influence from a genderperspective, the literature on gender differences and gender

roles suggests that women have higher affiliation needs andare thus more concerned with pleasing others and more

likely to conform to majority opinions ([35], [36]) while

gender role theory suggests that women tend to value and

respond to opinions of their social group. Following fromthese we formulated the following hypothesis:

H1: Gender and Nationality will moderate the effect

exerted on behavior intention by social influence in a way

that the importance of social influence will be morepronounced for males and females of international origin.

.

H2:GenderandNationality will moderate the relationshipbetween performance expectancy and behavioral intention

such that the importance ofperformance expectancy will be

more pronounced within the national group when compared

to their international counterpart


exerted on behavior intention by effort expectancy such that

the influence ofeffort expectancy will be more pronounced

for males and females of international origin than theirnational counterpart.

H4: Facilitating condition will be a more important

determinant for international males and females than their

national counterpart.

GenderExperienceVoluntarinessNationality

FC

SI

EEBI UB

Age

Figure 2: Nationality Based UTAUT (NUTAUT)

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4. METHODS

4.1 Survey Instrument

The data-gathering instrument used for this studywas a self-administered online questionnaire. The

questionnaire was based on the pre-existing tool developed by Venkatesh [7] and has been used by Anderson and

Schwager [27], Moran [37] and Tibenderana & Ogao [31].

The research question was divided into three sections.

Section 1 contained 18 close-ended questions whichcollected the participant demographic information and their

experience with computers and ELS. Section 2 contained

21 questions about ELS hardware and services provided byMiddle East Technical University (METU) library. These

questions collected the students awareness of these

facilities and services. The respondents chose either a

Yes, No or Not Sure answer in response to each ELSservices and facilities indicated. Section 3 contained 25questions with a 5-point Likert scale where 1 represented

strongly agree and a 5 represented strongly disagree.

4.2 Participants

There were a total of 116 participants: 56 Males

(28 international and 28 national) and 60 Females (30

international and 30 national) graduate students. The

participants were distributed across various departments

and the number of international graduates and National

graduate students from each departments and schools werefairly evenly distributed to ensure valid comparison.

Moreover, the number of male and female participants was

also fairly evenly distributed. A pilot study was carried outon 10 participants (4 international graduate students and 6

National graduate students) to ensure the clarity of the

questions for the respondents and to eliminate problemsthat might arise while recording and analyzing the data.

The results from the respondents were analyzed to ensure

that it could answer the Hypothesis. The survey was

confirmed adequate for the research; although some minor

rephrasing was made on some questions to increaseunderstandability.

4.3 Electronic Library Services Offered in theUniversity.

Eleven ELS services were listed in the

questionnaire and respondents were asked questions abouttheir availability. Again more than 70% of all the

respondents confirmed the availability of all the listed

services with the exception of Electronic Database which

has only 8% of the entire respondent confirming the

availability. This also indicates a high degree of awareness

of the services apart from Electronic Database which needsadequate sensitization.

5 RESULT ANALYSIS

5.1 Validation of the survey instrument and NUTAUT

The data analysis was done using SPSS 17 and

Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) structural equationmodeling tool. SPSS 17 was adopted to conduct Principal

Components Analysis (PCA) and to assess the validity of

the scale. The Cronbachs Alpha was calculated to examinethe reliability of each factor, the Alpha values of the

questionnaire exceeded 0.8 (Table 3, column 5),

demonstrating the good reliability. Before conductingPCA, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett sphericity

test was checked to measure for the sampling adequacy

[38]. The KMO were all >0.700 and the result of Bartlettsphericity test was significant at 0.7) than cross-loadings onother factors (


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http://www.cisjournal.orghardware. In response to the questions about the availabilityof 11 ELS services listed in the questionnaire, more than

70% of all the respondents confirmed the availability of all

the listed services with the exception of ElectronicDatabase with only 8% of the entire respondent confirming

its availability. This also indicates a high degree ofawareness of the hardware apart from Electronic Database

that needs adequate sensitization.

5.3 International versus National StudentsThe four groups result estimation using LISREL are asshown in Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6. The comparison of the

results from the two analyses is summarized in Table 7 and

8. The contributions of the various independent constructsPE, EE FC and SI are shown in Table 7 column 3 and 4. It

shows that FC is the most important predictor of acceptance

for the two groups. The international female students model

shows predictive efficiency of 32% and 56% for thedependent construct ofbehavioral intentand use behavior(a total predictive capability of 88% for the dependent

variables) as shown in Figure 3 and Table 8, the national

female students model shows predictive efficiency of 20%

and 62% (a total predictive capability of 82% for thedependent variable) as shown in Figure 4 and Table 8,

international male students model shows predictiveefficiency of 25% and 61% for the dependent construct of

behavioral intent and use behavior (a total predictive

capability of 86% for the dependent variables) as shown in

Figure 5 and Table 8. The national male students model

shows predictive efficiency of 18% and 78% (a total

predictive capability of 96% for the dependent variables) asshown in Figure 6 and Table 8. This means that the four

groups accept and use ELS though at varyingt degrees.

Table 3: Construct Validity and Reliability Measure

GroupComparison

KMO

Bartlett

Sphericity

Cronba

chsAlpha

P-Value

Chi-Squ

are/df

RAMSEA

Recommended Value

>0.5


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Figure 6: National Male Participants Model

Figure 5: International Male Participants ModelFigure 3: International Female Participants Model

Figure 4: National Female Participants Model

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http://www.cisjournal.orgTable 7: Comparison of National and International Model

Contributions

Table 8: Comparison of International and National Models

Prediction

6. DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

This study reveals a rich set of pattern and results. Due

to space limitations, we will only highlight the most

important findings without going into details on specificresults. In general, the results suggest that Nationality and

Gender considered simultaneously is a significant

moderator that affects the acceptance of ELS and the effect

exerted by UTAUT constructs on individual groups(International males, International females, National males

and National female students) vary considerably.

Facilitating condition significantly influences theacceptance and use of ELS for the four groups.

In general, the NUTAUT does predict the successful

acceptance of ELS by graduate though at varying degrees

Table 8. The participants showed higher inclination to useELS by showing higher percentage of use behavioral. The

researcher believes that this is as a result of the role played

by readily available access and easy to use library facilityin-campus than out-campus since majority of the

participants stays inside the university campus and can

easily and conveniently access the ELS than the studentsliving outside the campus. To actually increase acceptance

of ELS, the research suggest that the university and any

other university that is working towards increasingacceptance of ELS should make accessibility (facilitating

conditions and effort expectancy) of the ELS at bothoutside and inside the campus easy.


exerted on behavior intention by social influence in a way

that the importance of social influence will be more

pronounced for males and females in the internationalcategory.

This hypothesis is supported. Though previous workson gender roles suggested that women have higher

affiliation needs and are thus more concerned with

pleasing others and more likely to conform to majority

opinions ([35], [36]), the result of our analysis in factshows that social influence has a more pronounced effecton international students (both males and females) than

their national counterpart by showing that social influence

predicts 28% for international females, 12% for national

females, 20% for international males and 2% for nationalmales as shown in Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 and also

summarized Table 7. This is as expected since internationalstudents are likely to move in group and, therefore, are

easily influenced to use this system by people that matters

to them in the environment. This can, to an extent, be

likened to the effect offacilitating condition; through social

facilitation and social comparison the groups function as a

motivator and can provide necessary assistance especiallyfor does that are new to the system. . Practically, this study

results suggest that organizations should use different

strategies in motivating the use of a new technology fordifferent situations/groups. For some information systems

whose usage is mandatory, those factors contributing to

social influence such as the instructors/supervisor's prodding might work. However, when the usage is

voluntary just like the case of ELS, the managers might

want to think of better ways to promote usage probably

through social facilitation and social comparison. As a

matter of fact, though social influence is a significant factorfor international students, the effect can greatly be reduced

by training and probably experience and therefore should

not be used as a strong motivator. This is consistent withthe previous studies (e.g., Venkatesh & Davis [7]); the

effect of subjective norm to usage intention is significant

under mandatory and inexperienced use situation.

Groups Constructs International

(N=58)

National

(N=58)

No.of

Questions

Asked

No.of

Questions

Retained

PE 0.20 0.30 4 4

EE 0.48 0.58 6 5

SI 0.28 0.12 3 2

FC 0.78 0.63 6 2

BI 0.32 0.20 3 2

Female(N=60)

UB 3 2

PE 0.41 0.50 4 4

EE 0.35 0.51 6 5

SI 0.20 0.02 3 2

FC 0.74 0.60 6 2

BI 0.25 0.18 3 2

Male(N=56)

UB 3 2

Gender Model BehavioralIntention

UseBehavior

Total

International 32% 56% 88%Female

National 20% 62% 82%

International 25% 61% 86%Male

National 18% 78% 96%

H2: Gender and Nationality will moderate the

relationship between performance expectancy and

behavioral intention to use technology, such that the

importance of performance expectancy will be more

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http://www.cisjournal.org pronounced within the national group when compared totheir international counterpart.

This Hypothesis is only partially supported. There is asignificant difference in the effect exerted on behavior

intention by performance expectancy between theinternational and national group. The model shows that

national male group hasperformance expectancy of 50% as

opposed to 41% of international male group while nationalfemales have performance expectancy of 30% as opposed

to the 20% of the international female counterpart as shown

in Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 and also summarized Table 7.Though theperformance expectancy of national male group

is higher at 50%, the performance expectancy of the

national females (30%) is lower than performanceexpectancy of international males (41%). This means that

within the gender groups, performance expectancy is a

significant factor for male than female. This shows that

males have higher tendency to use the ELS system as longas it is useful. In other words,performance expectancy is animportant factor for males despite their nationality while

effort expectancy determines acceptance for females more

than performance expectancy despite nationality. This

finding follows the work of [33, 34, 35].

More importantly, this result reveals that perceived performance expectancy of a system does vary based on

gender but not necessary based on nationality though the

degree of contribution still differs based on nationality of

the students. The most plausible explanation is thatperformance expectancy cannot be interpreted in isolation

without some other factors like effort expectancy andfacilitating condition; the usefulness of any system might

never get to be appreciated /discovered if the system is so

complex that end users hardly use it. Most internationalusers (males and females) lack the technical knowledge

needed to handle the complexity of the ELS especially at

the early stage of their arrival. This is understandable sincedifference policies guide the design and implementation of

ELS in difference countries. Therefore training of new

students especially the international students on the use of

ELS on arrival will surely increase acceptance.


exerted on behavior intention by effort expectancy such thatthe influence will be more pronounced for males and

females of national category than their international

counterpart.

This is supported. Effort expectancy contributes 51%

and 58% for national males and females respectively as

opposed to 35% and 48% for international males and

females respectively as shown in Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 and

also summarized Table 7. This means that for national

students (both males and females) acceptance is moredependent on effort expectancy than international students

(both males and females). This is partially contrarily to

some previous work [33, 34, 35] that shows that males havehigher tendency to use the ELS system even when it is

complex. In other words, Performance expectancy is animportant factor for males more than the effort expectancy

while effort expectancy determines acceptance for thefemales more than performance expectancy. Examining

gender and nationality simultaneously shows that both

females and males in the national group attach more

importance to the expected effort required to use thesystem. In other words national students are unlikely to use

the system if it is difficult to use even if it is useful. This

can also be explained by the fact that availability ofalternatives or competition generates negative effect

affecting perceived effort expectancy. The national students

have other sources of getting materials for their research

easily than international students and might not afford tospend a lot of time and energy searching through complexELS while international students can afford to spend an

extra effort to use the system. This could also mean that in

the absence of alternative, performance expectancy might

become as important as effort expectancy. This also agreeswith the work of Pontiggia and Virili [42] which shows that

technology acceptance is basically a choice among differentalternative technologies/tools to accomplish user tasks.

H4: Facilitating condition will be a more important

determinant for international males and females than their

national counterpart.

This hypothesis is again supported with 74% and 78%

prediction for international males and females respectively,

as opposed to 60% and 63% for national males and femalesrespectively as shown in Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 and also

summarized Table 7. Though international students group

(males and females) shows high contribution from facilitating condition than their national counterpart, in

general, facilitating condition has the highest contribution

to acceptance than any other variables in all the groups.

This means that irrespective of the group, facilitatingcondition is very crucial. Our initial assertion thatfacilitating condition will not be as important for national

students owing to the availability of alternatives which

includes resources from friends and families seems to bewrong. This can possibly be explained by the fact that the

University invests considerable amount of resources to

provide both online, offline and remote access to the ELS,

so international students as well as national students stillexhibits use behavior on the ELS despite availability of

alternatives. This is consistent with the empirical studies of

Thompson et al [43] that found the direct effect of

facilitating condition on usage behavior and some others [

7, 18].

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In general, the NUTAUT does predict the successful

acceptance of ELS by international males, national males,

international females, and national females with a total predictive capacity of 86%, 96%, 88% and 82%

respectively. The groups showed higher inclination to useELS by showing higher percentage ofuse behavioral. The

researcher believes that this is as a result of the role played

by readily available access and easy to use library facilityin-campus than out-campus since majority of the

participants stays inside the university campus and can

easily and conveniently access the ELS than the studentsliving outside the campus. To actually increase acceptance

of ELS, the research suggest that the university and any

other university that is working towards increasingacceptance of ELS should make accessibility (facilitating

conditions and effort expectancy) of the ELS at both outside

and inside the campus easy.

This study shows that the variables, facilitatingcondition, effort expectancy, performance expectancy and

social influence which are the critical components that

affect acceptance and use of ELS exert varying effects on

acceptance not just depending on gender but also on

nationality of the users. Facilitating condition remains themost important factors for the four group of user, however,

for international female group effort expectancy, socialinfluence and performance expectancy listed in decreasing

order of importance are the critical factors, and for the

national female group listed in decreases order of

importance effort expectancy, performance expectancy andsocial influence are the critical factors. Likewise for

international males, listed in decreasing order ofimportance, performance expectancy, effort expectancy,

social influence are the critical factors that effects

acceptance while for national males effort expectancy, performance expectancy and social influence listed in

decreasing order of importance are the determinants of

acceptance.Though this research focused on the acceptance of ELS in

educational institutions, the conclusions derived here could

have significant implications for organizations, business

and future researchers. From the researchers point of view,

most studies carried out in recent years have treatedtechnology users in the same way regardless of theirgender

and nationality. Nevertheless, the effect of this factor on

acceptance has being found significant. These variationsfound in users perceptions in relation to the use of ELS

illustrate the need for considering the effect ofgenderand

nationality in the design and improvement of these systems.

It is concluded that the differences discovered in thisresearch are not all similar to those previously established

by studies investigating only gender or gender and some

other variables like age. Males in general demonstrated a

higher acceptance of ELS than females.

In conclusion, organizations, managers, designers and

developers can raise intention to use ELS throughfacilitating conditions,, effort expectancy and performance

expectancy. Institutions may arrange training programs todevelop knowledge about the benefits and usage of ELS

system compared to some other randomized searches. The

training should be included as part of the event to featureduring the induction of new students especially for

international students. Also paring international students to

pair leaders could also function as a social facilitation tomotivate them to use ELS.

This research was carried out in a universityenvironment and may not reflect ELS acceptance outside

the university environment, although we plan to validate

NUTAUT elsewhere. In the researchers opinion, 116

participants are limited number for this type of studytherefore proposes conducting similar study on largernumber of participants and in another environment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe work reported in this paper was carried out

when the Author was a graduate student of Middle EastTechnical University, Turkey. The author appreciates their

provision of enabling environment for which the researchwas conducted.

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Documents

Impact of Gender and Nationality on Acceptance of a Digital Library an Empirical Validation of Nationality Based UTAUT Using SEM