The suitability of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model in open access adoption studies

Abstract

Technology acceptance models or theories are commonly used in studies aiming at predicting and explaining the individual behaviours towards the acceptance and usage of new technologies. This paper reports part of the findings from a doctoral research project which focused at analysing the acceptance and usage of open access within public universities in Tanzania. The study was guided by the Unified Theory of Technology Acceptance and Usage (UTAUT) model). The survey questionnaire targeted 544 respondents selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers at six public universities in Tanzania. A response rate of 73 percent was achieved and the binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for data analysis. The study findings suggest support for the application of the UTAUT model in studying the adoption of open access in a research environment. Among the findings, attitude, awareness, effort expectancy and performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for the researchers' behavioural intentions of open access usage. Similarly, age, awareness, behavioural intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect researchers' actual usage of open access. These factors should therefore be taken into account in the planning and implementation of open access projects. A further validation of the open access research model in similar research institutions in Tanzania and elsewhere is recommended. The UTAUT model has proved suitable in guiding an understanding of the factors that contribute to the acceptance and usage of open access by researchers in Tanzania.

Challenges and instructors’ intention to adopt and use open educational resources in higher education in Tanzania

“…These results suggest that instructors believe OER will be easy to use and free of efforts. The findings are consistent with similar studies, Percy and Belle (2012) and Dulle and Minishi-Majanja (2011), which assessed the acceptance of OER in Africa and open access in public universities in Tanzania respectively. These findings have important implications for OER and OER repository developers.…”

“…Considerably more work will need to be done by adding new factors to the UTAUT model in order to predict behavioural intention to use OER in teaching. Some of the factors that can be considered are attitude, information quality, and awareness, which were used by Percy and Belle (2012) and Dulle and Minishi-Majanja (2011) in similar studies.…”

Instructor Acceptance of Mobile Learning in Saudi Arabia: A Case Study of Hail University

“…The results show that effort expectancy was the only significant predictor of behaviour intention. Dulle and Minishi-Majanja (2011) utlised the UTAUT to examine students' adaptation of technology in the public universities of Tanzania. The use and adoption of open access were analysed.…”

Trust Versus Perceived Quality in Scholarly Publishing: A Personality-Attitude-Intention Approach

“…Intention is defined as a measure of effort and willingness to perform a behavior and is frequently used as the ultimate dependent variable in behavioral studies, including some research on OA publishing. 8 The causal relationship is based on traditional attitude theory, where intention is determined by attitudes such as perceptions of quality and trust, which in turn are influenced by personality traits. 9 A person's intention encompasses both the direction and the strength of the motivation to engage in a behavior.…”