Students' adoption of an open access online education service : An exploratory study in an emerging higher education (HE) market

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate students' adoption of an open access online education service in higher education and their perceptions of its attributes as an innovation in an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach – Given the exploratory nature of the research a two‐phase qualitative approach was adopted. The first phase comprised 11 in‐depth interviews to examine the universities' internal and external attributes that directly enhance the rate of adoption of the open access online education service. The second phase involved three focus groups examining students' perceptions of the innovation attributes as well as the likelihood that they would adopt the innovation. Findings – The results indicate that, besides the perceived attributes of the innovation being the main determinant of the students' adoption of it, a number of internal factors within the university and external factors within the educational market in Egypt directly influence the adoption process. Originality/value – The originality of the paper is in its empirical work as it adapted a well‐known theory, the perceived attributes of innovation model, and empirically tested it in a specific context: the higher education market in a developing country.