Library Hi TechAssessing the intention to use e-book among engineering undergraduates in UniversitiPutra Malaysia, MalaysiaMalathi Letchumanan Rohani Tarmizi

Article information:To cite this document:Malathi Letchumanan Rohani Tarmizi, (2011),"Assessing the intention to use e-book among engineeringundergraduates in Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 Iss 3 pp. 512 - 528Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07378831111174459

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Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:Malathi Letchumanan, Rohani Ahmad Tarmizi, (2011),"E-book utilization among mathematicsstudents of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 Iss 1 pp. 109-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07378831111116949Malathi Letchumanan, Balakrishnan Muniandy, (2013),"Migrating to e-book: a study on perceivedusefulness and ease of use", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 30 Iss 7 pp. 10-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-05-2013-0028Chun-Hua Hsiao, Kai-Yu Tang, (2014),"Explaining undergraduates’ behavior intention of e-textbookadoption: Empirical assessment of five theoretical models", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 32 Iss 1 pp. 139-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/LHT-09-2013-0126

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Assessing the intention to usee-book among engineering

undergraduates in UniversitiPutra Malaysia, Malaysia

Malathi LetchumananInstitute for Mathematical Research, Universiti Putra Malaysia,

Serdang, Malaysia, and

Rohani TarmiziLaboratory of Statistical Services and Computing,

Institute for Mathematical Research, Universiti Putra Malaysia,Serdang, Malaysia

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intention of using e-books as learningmaterial among undergraduates from an engineering department by using the technology acceptancemodel (TAM) and gender as its external variable.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey through questionnaire was conducted to collect datafrom the respondents. Data from 169 respondents who had experience in using e-book were analyzedin terms of factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Results – The analysis shows that perceived ease of use is positively related to perceived usefulness.Perceived usefulness has significant effect on attitude and intention to use e-books. Meanwhile,attitude has significant effect on intention to use. However, perceived ease of use has no significanteffect on attitude towards using e-books. In addition, gender appeared to have no significant effectseither on perceived ease of use or perceived usefulness.

Research limitations/implications – The study did not utilize the entire TAM where actualtechnology use is not included in this study.

Practical implications – The study is important in terms of obtaining better understanding ofe-book reading intention among engineering undergraduates who are the real users of e-books. Byobtaining the respondents’ perception on their intentions, action can be taken on how to motivate thenon-users of e-books to form the intention to use e-books.

Originality/value – This is believed to be the first published study of engineering undergraduates’intention on using e-books in Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Keywords Technology acceptance model, Undergraduates, Gender, Malaysia, Information technology,E-books, E-learning

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionSince their introduction, electronic books (e-books) have undergone a revolution in theirappearance that has been largely driven by the emergence of new technologies, newcompetition and ever-changing customers’ needs. Their penetration into the academicenvironment has led to a growing concern among academicians, publishers and

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LHT29,3

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Received March 2011Revised April 2011Accepted May 2011

Library Hi TechVol. 29 No. 3, 2011pp. 512-528q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0737-8831DOI 10.1108/07378831111174459

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learners. For instance, scholarly and technical publishers like McGraw Hill and Wileycompete with each other to sell their titles as e-books (Cassell and Mercado, 2009).While competition has intensified between e-book providers and publishers,simultaneous attempts have been made to improve e-book service quality andreduce selling costs, as evidenced by technological developments such as advancede-book reading devices and online accessibility. However, in spite of the hugeinvestments in e-book markets, consumer take-up has been slower than anticipated(Cox, 2004).

Lately, many educational institutions are offering innovative online degreeprograms, expending their educational territories without time and space barriers andcomplementing their traditional offline classes with e-learning educational tools. Tosupport the reference activities, these educational institutions upload the related e-booklinks in their e-learning system to provide comprehensive reference materials to thelearners. These learners claim that e-book services offered with the e-learning systemhelp to reduce their visits to the libraries and enhance learning effectiveness (Littmanand Connaway, 2004).

The success of e-book adoption is largely dependent upon the implementation of aneducational model which addresses the learner’s needs and the content relevancy of thee-book for a particular course. Designing a good e-book is a complicated task andrequires a complete list of user requirements in terms of design features and coursecontents. However, many e-books in the market are merely the scanned copies of theprinted books that are made available via the internet in the form of PortableDocument Format (PDF) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). They lack manyonline applications and design rules; therefore, they are not suitable for all types oflearners.

Generally, E-book is simply referred as the digital representation of the printedmaterial which is delivered trough mediums such as computer, e-book reader, PDA,mobile phone, internet, intranet and extranet. E-book is also created with a lot of newfeatures such as search and cross reference functions, multimedia features andhypertext links (Vassiliou and Rowley, 2008).

The development of e-book technology in Malaysia is strongly related to the rapidgrowth of its information and communication technology (ICT) industry. TheMalaysian government is one of the driving forces with the Ministry of HigherEducation (MOHE), Malaysia, helping local universities to subscribe to netLibrary at acost of Ringgit Malaysia 1.04 million (Haslina, 2010). Local universities provide e-bookservices in their campus libraries to cater to the increasing needs for referencematerials by a growing number of learners. Examples are Universiti Sains Malaysia,Universiti Utara Malaysia, University of Malaya, International Islamic University,Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Open Universiti Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Maraand Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

E-book services were introduced in UPM in 2008. Since the launch, no research hasbeen conducted to track the acceptance pattern of e-books among UPM students. Thestatistics from aggregators and publishers indicate that students from engineeringbackgrounds are the frequent users of the e-book as compared to students from otherdisciplines. Hence, the researcher believes that by investigating the engineeringundergraduates’ e-book utilization intention, meaningful and useful information onhow to form positive intention in students (non-users and rare users of e-book) from

The intention touse e-book

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other disciplines can be gathered. In addition to that, this information can also giveimportant insights to the library management and e-book providers to improve theirservice and subsequently attract more users to use e-book. Therefore a research thatemployed TAM was carried out to investigate the intention to use e-book amongengineering students.

Literature reviewThe technology acceptance model (TAM) originally formulated by Davis (1986) is thepreeminent theory that is widely used to explain and predict user acceptance of newinformation system. TAM was rooted in the theory of reasoned actions (TRA), a modelsuggests that beliefs influence attitudes, attitudes influence intention and this maygenerate behaviors (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). Based on TAM model, the level oftechnology acceptance by users depends on two main constructs, namely, perceivedusefulness and perceived ease of use. Davis (1986) defines perceived usefulness as “thedegree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his orher job performance” and defines perceived ease of use as “the degree to which aperson believes that using a particular system would be free of effort.” The originalTAM model is shown in Figure 1. The main idea of TAM model is that the potentialuser’s overall behavioral intention to use an information system is considered as themajor factor that determines a person’s system usage. The behavioral intention to usethe system is influenced by attitudes towards using the system. These attitudes areinfluenced by two beliefs, namely, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use thata person holds about the use of technology. Perceived ease of use has causal effects onperceived usefulness. External variables can directly influence perceived usefulnessand perceived ease of use. Table I summarizes some of the past research that usedTAM as the theoretical framework. Table I indicates authors, purpose of the paper,constructs used, subjects, methodology and findings.

Gender and technology adoptionEarly studies have highlighted that compared to women, men have more favorableattitude towards technology. These studies suggested that women seem to have lessexperience with computers and tend to be less skilled in the use of computers (Harrisonand Rainer, 1992). In addition, researchers have also reported that, women seem tosuffer great levels of anxiety (Igbaria and Chakrabarti, 1990) with computers,experience less computer involvement in their daily lives (Williams et al., 1993), hadlow confidence in their own ability to work with computers (Shashaani and Khalili,2001) and prefer to use printed materials than read online (Enoch and Soker, 2006).However, lately studies have found that gender gaps are lessening. For instance, Ray

Figure 1.TAM

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et al. (1999) found that there is no significant difference between genders towardscomputer anxiety. In addition, Morris et al. (2005) reported that gender difference intechnology perception have shrunk among young generation. Meanwhile,Morahan-Martin and Schumaker (1999) argued that, gender is no more an importantpredictor of Internet and computer competencies and experiences.

Past research on e-book by using TAMVery few studies have investigated TAM as a model to explain the acceptance of thee-books. Mohd Fakhrulzaman (2005) focused on Malaysian children’s perceptionstowards International Children Digital Library eBook (ICDL) reader which operatesusing five types of e-book reader, namely, standard, comic strip, spiral, plus and Adobereaders. For research purpose, the author used two ICDL readers namely, standard andcomic strip readers. The results showed that children perceived the comic strip readeras more useful compared to the standard reader. However, they perceived the standardreader as easier to use compared to the comic strip reader. The result also revealed thatgender, age group and computer experience had no significant influence on the users’perceptions towards usefulness and ease of use regarding ICDL eBook readers.

Tao (2008) conducted a research among public health students to predict theirintentions to use e-resources (including e-books) to complete their research paperassignment. The author examined the roles of two aspects of e-resource characteristics,namely, information quality and system quality. The study found that perceivedusefulness played a major role in determining the students’ intentions to usee-resources. Furthermore, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use influencedthe impact that information quality and system quality had on behavior intention.

Nelson and Webb (2007) examined students’ perceptions towards e-books usingconstructs (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) based on the general TAM,web usability items (ease of finding and ease of understanding) pertaining tonavigational ease, visually pleasing design and computer anxiety. The respondentswere 133 students enrolled in multiple sections of an introductory MIS course thatrequired them to use an online version of the textbook. The result revealed that bothease of understanding and ease of finding were the significant predictors of ease of useand usefulness while ease of understanding and usefulness were the significantpredictors of the usage of the same e-books for future classes. The authors alsohighlighted that appearance, on-screen design and navigation were the crucial factorsfor the success of electronic textbooks.

Ho et al. (2010) examined 242 users’ acceptance of cross-media books for learningpurpose by using TAM. The authors identified the factors influencing users’acceptance of using cross-media books for learning and tested whether TAM couldexplain users’ acceptance and usage of cross-media for learning. The result revealedthat highly educated young and middle-aged users were the most experienced e-bookreaders. Most of the respondents used computers to read e-books. In addition, theirstudy also investigated four dimensions (performance expectancy, effort expectancy,social influence and attitudes towards using technology) which were adapted from theunified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). These dimensions hadsignificant positive effects on the behavioral intentions of using cross-media e-books.The authors suggested that future e-book publishers should pay attention to the trends

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of e-books for mobile phones since more and more users use mobile phones to reade-books.

Bansal (2010) discussed the role of environmental consciousness and personality(Big-5) on e-book usage, the influence of preference for traditional books and e-bookdesigns on the intention to use e-books. Based on the data from 115 e-book usersstudying in a Midwestern University, the study demonstrated several importantfindings:

(1) Environmental consciousness positively impacted on the perceivednavigational and visual designs of e-books and significantly lowered thepreference for traditional book.

(2) Past usage lowered the preference for traditional books.

(3) Perceived positive visual and navigational designs were positively associatedwith perceived ease of use.

(4) Preference for traditional books lowered perceived usefulness of e-books andperceived ease of using e-books.

(5) Perceived usefulness had a stronger impact on continuing usage intention asopposed to perceived ease of use.

(6) Emotional instability and agreeableness enhanced the preference for traditionalbooks.

(7) Consciousness lowered the preference for traditional books.

(8) Extraversion and intellect did not have any significant impact on the preferencefor traditional books.

(9) Perceived ease of use positively impacted on perceived usefulness.

(10) Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were significant predictors ofbehavior intentions related to continued e-book usage.

In this study, e-book which is provided by the UPM library management which hasuniform design and access platform (available in HTML format and can be accessedvia internet) was used to capture the perception on e-book from the undergraduates.The research hypotheses of this study are:

H1. Perceived ease of use has a significant effect on perceived usefulness.

H2. Perceived ease of use has a significant effect on attitude towards using.

H3. Perceived usefulness has a significant effect on attitude towards using.

H4. Perceived usefulness has a significant effect on intention to use.

H5. Attitude towards using has a significant effect on intention to use.

H6. Gender has a significant effect on perceived usefulness.

H7. Gender has a significant effect on perceived ease of use.

The research model of the study is shown in Figure 2.

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Research methodologyParticipantsThe sample consisted of 169 undergraduates from the engineering department of UPMwho had experience in using e-book. The respondents included 86 females (50.9percent) and 83 males (49.1 percent). Respondents’ ages ranged from 19 to 38, with amean age of 23.15 years and standard deviation of 2.976 years. Participants came fromthree different residential areas: urban (40.8 percent), sub-urban (38.5 percent) and rural(20.7 percent). Most of them used e-books rarely (63.9 percent, n ¼ 108) as compared tothose who used e-books regularly (36.1 percent, n ¼ 61). Majority of the respondents(n ¼ 153, 90.5 percent) admitted that they have good computer skills. Table IIsummarizes the demographic profile and descriptive statistics of the respondents.

InstrumentFor this study, the questionnaire consisted of 20 items with eight in the first sectionand 12 in the second section. The first eight items of the questionnaire assesseddemographic characteristics such as age, gender, current level of education, currentyear of study, residential area, experience in using e-books, frequency of using e-booksand computer skills. The 12 items in the second section assessed four constructs:perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), attitudes towards using(ATTITUDE) and intention towards use (ITU) based on the research model. All the12 items used a five-point Lickert scale with 1 representing “strongly disagree” and

Demographic information Category Frequency Percentage (%)

Gender Male 83 49.1Female 86 50.9

Year of study First 13 7.7Second 54 32Third 8 4.7Fourth 69 40.8Fifth 25 14.8

Residential area Sub-urban 69 40.8Urban 65 38.5Rural 35 20.7

Frequency of e-book usage among e-book user Regular 108 63.9Rare 61 36.1

Computer skill Beginner 16 9.5Expert 153 90.5

Table II.Socio-demographic

profile of the respondents

Figure 2.Research model

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5 representing “strongly agree”. The items used to measure PEOU, PU, ATTITUDEand ITU were adopted from previous research (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989; Moonand Kim, 2001; Venkatesh, 2000) with some modifications to suit the research contexts.Table III summarizes the operational definitions as well as the references for eachconstruct.

To reduce the possible ambiguity of the items in the questionnaire, a pre-test usingone intact class of 20 students was conducted. Minor changes to the order andwordings of the items were made resulting from the pre-testers’ feedback.

ProcedureThe undergraduates were asked to complete the questionnaire during class time tosecure a high response rate. Each session lasted approximately 25 minutes. In thebeginning the undergraduates were told the purpose of the survey and how they couldrespond to the questions. Instructions were given in stages. The undergraduatescompleted one section of the questionnaire at a time to ensure that they all understoodand completed all the questions.

A total of 350 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the undergraduates.Out of 350 copies, 259 usable questionnaire forms were returned yielding, a responserates of 74 percent. For the purpose of this study, 169 questionnaires from respondentswho had previous experience in using e-book were analyzed. The real users’ data wereanalyzed because their perceptions can deliver useful information to e-book designersto improve its design and content as compared to those users who had no experiencewith e-book. In addition, users’ perception on intention to use e-book can be used toencourage non-users to form positive intention towards e-book.

Data analysis and resultsPASW was used to analyze the collected data of this study. In order to test the internalreliability of the constructs, reliability test in terms of Cronbach’s a was computed. TheCronbach’s a value for the four constructs PEOU, PU, ITU and ATTITUDE of thisstudy were 0.741, 0.882, 0.773, and 0.770, respectively. As suggested by Cuieford (1965)

ConstructNumber of

items adapted Definition Source/reference

Perceivedusefulness

4 The degree to which a personbelieves that using e-bookswould enhance his/her jobperformance

Davis (1989)

Perceived easeof use

3 The degree to which a personbelieves that using e-bookswould be free of efforts

Davis (1989), Davis et al. (1989),Moon and Kim (2001) andVenkatesh (2000)

Attitudetowards using

2 The strength of one’s feelings offavorableness orunfavorableness towards e-book use

Davis et al., 1989

Behavioralintention to use

2 The extent of a person purposesto use e-books

Davis et al. (1989) andVenkatesh (2000)

Table III.Constructs andoperational definitions

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and Nunnally (1978), the Cronbach’s a value of all these constructs were above theconventional level of 0.7. Thus, all these constructs were deemed to exhibit adequatereliability.

Factor analysis was then conducted to examine measurement convergent anddiscriminant validity. Convergent validity is considered satisfactory when items loadhigher on their respective constructs (Chau and Hu, 2002). Meanwhile, discriminantvalidity is considered satisfactory when each item load higher on the construct itmeasured than any other (Chau and Hu, 2002). Prior to factor analysis,Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartletts’s test of sphericity test were carried out toidentify whether factor analysis is suitable for this study. The results of these testsindicate that KMO recorded the value of 0.796 (.0.7) and Bartletts’s test of sphericityis significant at p ¼ 0:00. Hence, factor analysis is suitable to be carried out.

Factor analysis of this study utilized the principal factor analysis extraction methodwith Varimax rotation to assess the construct validity of the twelve items of the TAMquestionnaire. As depicted in Table IV, results shows that four factors were extractedwith eigenvalue . 1.0. The results also indicates that items within each constructswere loaded highly on its associated construct than on any other construct whichshows evidence of discriminant validity. Moreover, all item exhibited loading valuehigher than 0.50 on their respective factors, far exceeding 0.30 which is considered theminimum loading for interpretability (Tabachninick and Fidell, 1996). Hence, itdisplays good convergent validity.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed to test the fit between theresearch model and obtained data. In this study, AMOS 18.0 was used and theestimation procedure employed was maximum likelihood estimation. Six commonmodel goodness-of-fit measures as were recommended in the literature (Hair et al.,1998; Hu et al., 1999) were examined in this study. Table V shows the level ofacceptable fit and the fit indices for the research model in this study. In practice, aChi-square/degree of freedom (CMIN/df) of less than 3, goodness of fix index (GFI),

Scale item 1 2 3 4

PU2 0.908PU3 0.851PU1 0.844PU4 0.572PEOU1 0.812PEOU2 0.805PEOU3 0.707ITU2 0.909ITU1 0.835ATTITUDE2 0.907ATTITUDE1 0.868Eigen value 2.857 2.154 1.689 1.665Total variance explained (%) 25.973 19.582 15.355 15.135Cumulative variance explained (%) 25.973 45.555 60.910 76.045

Notes: Principal axis factoring was used with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization; n ¼ 169;Rotation converged in six rotations; Factor 1 ¼ Perceived usefulness; Factor 2 ¼ Perceived ease ofuse; Factor 3 ¼ Intention to use; Factor 4 ¼ Attitude towards using

Table IV.Factor loadings for the

rotated factor

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normed fit index (NFI), comparative fit index (CFI) greater than 0.9, an adjustedgoodness of fix index (AGFI) greater than 0.8 and root mean square error ofapproximation (RMSEA) less than 0.08 are considered indicators of good fit. As shownin Table V, all the indices exceed their respective common acceptable levels with theexceptions of AGFI which is close enough (0.874) to the recommended value of 0.9,demonstrating that the model exhibited a good fit with the data collected.

The results of testing the structural model are presented in Table VI and a graphicalpresentation of the results is shown in Figure 3. The analytical results show that PEOUpositively affected PU (b ¼ 0:582, R 2 ¼ 0:319, p , 0.001). Thus, H1 is supported.Meanwhile ATTITUDE was significantly determined by PU (b ¼ 20:434, R 2 ¼ 0:110,p , 0.05). Therefore, H2 is supported. According to the results in Table VI, PU had asignificant influence on ITU with b ¼ 0:550, p , 0.001. Hence, H4 is supported. Inaddition, ATTITUDE had significant effect on ITU (b ¼ 20:009, p , 0.05). Thus,H5 is

Figure 3.Results of research model

Model goodness-fit indexes Recommended value Result

Chi-square/degree of freedom (CMIN/df) ,3.00 1.813Goodness of fit index (GFI) .0.90 0.922Normed fit index (NFI) .0.80 0.874Comparative fit index (CFI) .0.90 0.952Adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) .0.90 0.874Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ,0.08 0.070

Table V.Summary statistics ofmodel fit

Hypothesis Causal path Path coefficient Result

H1 PEOU ! PU 0.582 * * SupportedH2 PEOU ! ATTITUDE 20.888 Not supportedH3 PU ! ATTITUDE 20.434 * SupportedH4 PU ! INT 0.550 * * SupportedH5 ATT ! INT 20.009 * Supported

Notes: *p , 0.05; * *p , 0.001Table VI.Hypothesis testing result

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supported. Both PU and ATTITUDE explain 20 percent variance in ITU. However, theresults indicated that PEOU had no significant effect on ATTITUDE (b ¼ 20:088,p . 0.05) and Gender had no significant effect either on PU or PEOU. Thus, H3, H6 andH7 are not supported. Overall, the square multiple correlations for the structuralequations index indicates that 20 percent of the variation in the dependent variable isexplained by the variation in the independent variables. Table VII shows the direct,indirect and total effects of study variables of this study.

The result of independent t-test shows that there is no significant difference betweengender and perceived usefulness (tð167Þ ¼ 20:323, p ¼ 0:747) and between gender andperceived ease of use (tð167Þ ¼ 1:377, p ¼ 0:170). The means for each construct andresult of independent sample t-test are shown in Tables VIII and IX, respectively.

DiscussionBased on the findings, four hypotheses (PEOU ! PU, PU ! ATTITUDE, PU ! INTand ATTITUDE ! INT) were supported and three hypotheses(PEOU ! ATTITUDE, Gender ! PU and Gender ! PEOU) were not supported.

The result revealed that perceived ease of use has significant effect on perceivedusefulness. This is in agreement with Davis (1989), Wang et al. (2003) Selim (2003), andShih (2004) who admitted that perceived ease of use is highly associated with perceivedusefulness in the adoption of technological products and services. The result indicatesthat, perceive ease of use play important role in making the e-book to be perceived asuseful. Therefore, the e-book provider should understand that the easy the e-book is tolearn, use or navigate the more useful it will be for the students.

Levene’s testfor equality ofvariance T-test for equality of meansF Sig t df Sig (2-tailed) Mean difference Std. error difference

3.619 0.060 20.323 167 0.747 20.034 0.107

Table IX.Independent sample t-test(gender vs perceived ease

of use)

Levene’s testfor equality ofvariance T-test for equality of meansF Sig t df Sig (2-tailed) Mean difference Std. error difference

0.263 0.608 1.300 167 0.170 0.150 0.108

Table VIII.Independent sample t-test

(gender vs perceivedusefulness)

Men (n ¼ 83) Women (n ¼ 86)Construct Mean SD Mean SD

PU 3.837 0.744 3.872 0.653PEOU 3.855 0.716 3.705 0.699

Table VII.Mean value for eachconstruct by gender

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The study found that perceived usefulness is the greatest predictor of intention to usee-book. This is in agreement with Davis (1989) and Hong et al. (2002) who revealed thatperceived usefulness has significant contribution on students’ intention to usetechnology. According to Hong et al. (2002), although a technology product is easy touse, in the long run it can be abandoned if it does not provide critically neededfunctionality. This suggests that students will have the intention to use e-book when itis useful for them in their learning activities and when they found that it can help themto improve their course performance and their course work productivity.

The finding also revealed that perceived usefulness negatively affect the attitudetowards using the e-book. Since most of the respondents agreed that e-book can be auseful reference material for their coursework, they have generally favorable attitudetowards using the e-book.

Attitude towards using e-book also appeared to have significant effect on intentiontowards using e-book. This implies to us that, if a student has positive or favorableattitudes towards e-book it will motivate him/her to have the intention to use the e-bookfrequently. The finding is in line with other studies (Stoel and Lee, 2003; Malhotra andGalletta, 1999) which revealed significant relationship between attitude and intentionto use.

Perceived ease of use appeared to have no significant effects on attitude. This isinconsistent with the results of some prior studies (Chau, 1996; Moon and Kim, 2001;Nitish et al., 2004). According to Chau and Hu (2002) this inconsistency is worth noting,because it shows significant differences between users who are technology savvy andthe typical users commonly examined in previous studies (most of the participants ofthis study noted that they have good computer skills). Furthermore, the nature of theengineering course requires the participants to expose to more complex technologiesthen e-book. Therefore, these participants have the general capacity to learn how to usee-book technology quickly. Hence, the difficulties of operating an e-book do notinfluence the respondents’ attitudes towards using an e-book.

Finally, gender seems to have no significant effect on both the perceived usefulnessand perceived ease of use. This result revealed that, gender is not an important factorthat influences the respondents of this to study to perceive e-book as useful and easy touse. These results support the findings of Morahan-Martin and Schumaker (1999) andRay et al. (1999) suggesting that the gender gap with respect to new technology may belessening.

ConclusionThe purpose of this study was to investigate the intention of using e-book as learningmaterial among undergraduates from engineering department of higher learninginstitution by using TAM model. Previous studies have proved that, TAM can be auseful model in evaluating acceptance of technology products and services. Based onthe current study result, it can be concluded that TAM can be a valuable tool ininvestigating the intention of using e-books among undergraduates.

This study also provides important insights and suggestions. First, this studyreveals the importance of attitude cultivation and management. To encourage theparticipants to form the intention of using newly implemented technology such ase-book, the library management and e-book providers should devise strategies forcultivating positive attitudes toward using the e-book (Chau and Hu, 2002). In this

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connection, e-book providers and the library management should create favourableperception concerning the usefulness of e-book among the participants. Creating thispositive perception can be achieved if the e-book providers and library managementoffer training and seminars about the usefulness of e-book that focus on how e-bookcan assist in improving students’ efficiency and effectiveness in learning process. Thisis because, IS study proposed that training provides conceptual and proceduralknowledge for users who need to use technology products and services in their dailylives. These consequently will influence perceived ease of use (Venkatesh and Davis,1996) and attitudes (Raymond, 1988) of a user. Secondly, academicians and e-bookproviders need to collaborate in order to create e-book which is user-friendly in term ofdesign and content which can encourage more students to form the intention to usee-book regularly than printed materials.

This study has several limitations. First, the study did not utilize the entire TAMmodel where actual technology use is not included in this study. Furthermore, TAMcan be extended by including variables such perceived enjoyment, cost and facilities(computer and internet facility) to provide more robust model to predict the intentionsto use e-book among the respondents.

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Further reading

Ma, Q. and Liu, L. (2004), “The technology acceptance model: a meta-analysis of empiricalfindings”, Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 59-72.

Rao, S.S. (2004), “E-book technologies in education and India’s readiness”, Program: ElectronicLibrary and Information Systems, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 257-67.

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Woody, W.D. and Baker, C.A. (2010), “E-books or textbooks: students prefer textbooks”,Computer and Education, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 945-8.

AppendixPerceived usefulness (PU)

PU1 Using e-books enhance my effectiveness in learning.

PU2 Using e-books would improve my course performance.

PU3 Using e-books would increase my productivity in my course work.

PU4 I found e-books useful.

Perceived ease of use (PEOU)

PEOU1 I found e-books easy to use.

PEOU2 E-books are easy to access.

PEOU3 Learning to use e-books is easy for me.

Intention to use (ITU)

ITU1 I intend to use e-books frequently.

ITU2 I intend to use e-book services more than printed materials.

Attitude towards using (ATTITUDE)

ATTITUDE1 I dislike the idea of using e-books.

ATTITUDE2 Using e-book is a foolish idea.

Corresponding authorMalathi Letchumanan can be contacted at: malathi6@hotmail.com

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2. Chun-Hua Hsiao, Kai-Yu Tang. 2014. Explaining undergraduates’ behavior intention of e-textbookadoption. Library Hi Tech 32:1, 139-163. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

3. J. K. L. Poon. 2014. Empirical Analysis of Factors Affecting the E-Book Adoption—Research Agenda.Open Journal of Social Sciences 02, 51-55. [CrossRef]

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