Student acceptance of social media in higher education : an application of UTAUT2 model

With the widespread prevalence of social media platforms, it is critical to consider students' attitudes and acceptance of these platforms to build potential understandings and deployments of these emerging technologies in education. The objective of the current paper is to explore these relationships. A modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model is proposed with the Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating Condition, Hedonic Motivation, and Habit as the latent variable and the direct impact of these variables on the behavioural intention of students has been investigated. Additionally, the moderating role of age and gender has been tested in the relationship between intention and use behavior. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the dynamic interactions between these social media technologies' determinants. PLS-SEM software is used for the same. The key finding of the result provides support for moderating role of gender between intention and use behavior. However, age was not found to have a significant impact on this relationship. The result suggests that institutions of higher education must introduce or continue the use of social media, as an intention to use these technologies translate into real use. Further, these organizations should enhance the internet infrastructure and re-evaluate social media usage to better capitalize on this technology and make it an essential tool for education.