VOL. 1, NO.

2, Oct 2010

E-ISSN 2218-6301

Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information 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 ORJI
Computer Science Department University of Saskatchewan, Canada E-mail: rita.orji@usask.ca

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 ignoring them. Consequently, different Technology Acceptance Models have been applied towards understanding the effect of various factors on end users acceptance of Information Systems (IS). Gender has 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 gender but also based on nationality and, therefore, developed a Nationality Based UTAUT (NUTAUT) adapted from UTAUT to account for the effect of gender and nationality on acceptance, simultaneously. Nationality was introduced based on the assumption that the UTAUT independent constructs will impact on acceptance and usage differently when moderated by gender and nationality simultaneously. The result obtained from the analysis of data collected from 116 student participants provides support for NUTAUT by showing that the various UTAUT constructs exert varying degree of effects when moderated by gender and 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 their nationality and gender. Social Influence was found to be significant for both international males and females while effort expectancy is a more significant factor for both 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, Nationality. Structural Equation Model, Gender,

1.

INTRODUCTION

There 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. Department of 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 can directly 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 that information 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 made towards 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 of Electronic 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 on investments. 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 gender so that information system designers, school managers, library managers and others can formulate strategies to design systems that can be acceptable by all (males, females, international, national). It has been shown that women are significantly less receptive 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 overall quality of IS. Therefore, understanding the relationships between gender related constructs like nationality will be helpful in explaining why female students have lower technology acceptance. 68

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

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The 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 in educational 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 in technology perceptions is more pronounced among older workers while there is unisex pattern of results among younger workers and Wang et al [6] found that gender moderated 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 the effect exerted by gender on the independent constructs will vary 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 gender and 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 on nationality. Our research model not only predicts the varying degrees of acceptance for each user groups but also shows the degree of importance of each independent construct in determining acceptance for each group. The study significantly contributes towards understanding the acceptance 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 people of different nationalities. 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 There have been significant advances in the technical development of digital libraries in areas such as information 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 observed that 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 sophomore displayed as they interacted with digital library databases. Her data revealed basic difference between structures inherent in database and the conceptual structure that students 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 accessing the appropriate information for their research. The study demonstrated that information search has not become easier with the advent of technology. 2.2 Technology Acceptance Theories It is a common belief that introducing a new technology 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 theories include; 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 or her 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]. We approached 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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[13]. Gender is a significant variable in explaining differential 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], information retrieval [18], e-learning [20], communication technologies [21] and online purchasing behaviour [17]. Majority of the studies appear more favorably towards men than 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 of use, 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 lower with 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 between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective norm 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 recent literature. 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] who systematically compared the eight previous models and their predictive factors. Determinants of acceptance in UTAUT are: performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI) and facilitating 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 UTAUT constructs 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]).

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

s Table 1: UTAUT Components Determinant Performance expectancy (PE) Effort expectancy (EE) Social influence (SI) Facilitating conditions (FC) Behavioral Intention (BI) Use Behavior (UB) Description Degree to which an individual believes that using the system will help attain gains in job performance. The degree of ease associated with the use of the system. The degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system. The degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system. The measure of the likelihood of an individual to employ the application. This measures the acceptance of the technology. Table 2: UTAUT Moderators Moderator Gender Age Experience Voluntariness use of Description Gender roles have a strong psychological basis and are enduring. Age has an effect on attitudes. Deals with how long the user has used the system. If usage is voluntary or mandated.

3. MODEL FORMULATION This section summarizes the NUTAUT and proposed the hypothesis that guides this study.

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3.1 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 with predictive 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, in addition to the fact that the moderating variables offer

flexibility to allow the introduction of new dimensions into the model, was the major motivation for the use of UTAUT model in the current investigation. NUTAUT was adapted from UTAUT by introducing a new modulating variable nationality as shown in Figure 2. Nationality was introduced based on the assumption that the UTAUT independent variables PE, EE, SI will impact on BI differently and BI with FC will also impact on UB differently when moderated by nationality. The definition of these construct are given in Table 1 and Table 2.

PE

EE BI SI
FC UB

Nationality

Voluntariness

Experience

Gender

Age

Figure 2: Nationality Based UTAUT (NUTAUT) 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 independent variables 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 will be 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 gender perspective, the literature on gender differences and gender roles suggests that women have higher affiliation needs and are 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 from these 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 more pronounced for males and females of international origin. . H2: Gender and Nationality will moderate the relationship between performance expectancy and behavioral intention such that the importance of performance expectancy will be more pronounced within the national group when compared to their international counterpart H3: Gender and Nationality will moderate the effect exerted on behavior intention by effort expectancy such that the influence of effort expectancy will be more pronounced for males and females of international origin than their national counterpart. H4: Facilitating condition will be a more important determinant for international males and females than their national counterpart.

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

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4. METHODS 4.1 Survey Instrument

of the services apart from Electronic Database which needs adequate sensitization. 5 RESULT ANALYSIS

The data-gathering instrument used for this study was 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 which collected the participant demographic information and their experience with computers and ELS. Section 2 contained 21 questions about ELS hardware and services provided by Middle 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 ELS services and facilities indicated. Section 3 contained 25 questions with a 5-point Likert scale where 1 represented strongly agree and a 5 represented strongly disagree.

5.1 Validation of the survey instrument and NUTAUT The data analysis was done using SPSS 17 and Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) structural equation modeling 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 examine the reliability of each factor, the Alpha values of the questionnaire exceeded 0.8 (Table 3, column 5), demonstrating the good reliability. Before conducting PCA, 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 Bartlett sphericity test was significant at <0.001 (Table 3, column 3 and 4). Thus data were suitable to conduct factor analysis [11]. The factor loadings and the corresponding factor scores (weights) for each variable were generated. The dimensionalities of the twenty-five statement making up the six constructs of the instrument were each subjected to factor analysis resulting in the removal of two questions and the models re-estimated. Each factor has larger loading on its corresponding factor (>0.7) than cross-loadings on other factors (<0.4). Thus these items could effectively reflect factors since they had good validity including convergent validity and discriminant validity [40]. Structural Equation Model software LISREL on the other hand was employed to estimate the path coefficients and to validate and test models hypotheses. We used Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to test for the model fitness on the data. The results show that the hypothesized model is recursive, uni-directional (Table 3 & 5). The fit indices of the model are listed in Table 4 and Table 5. The tables list the recommended value and actual value of each fit index, the actual value was better than the recommended value. Thus the model was a good fit to the data. Table 5 summarizes the results of the t-test analysis which further confirms the validity of the models. Also, as shown in the Table 6 all the standardized loadings of items on their corresponding factor were larger than 0.7 further proving good convergent validity [41]. 5.2 Availability of ICT Hardware in the Library

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 were fairly evenly distributed to ensure valid comparison. Moreover, the number of male and female participants was also fairly evenly distributed. A pilot study was carried out on 10 participants (4 international graduate students and 6 National graduate students) to ensure the clarity of the questions for the respondents and to eliminate problems that 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 increase understandability. 4.3 Electronic Library Services Offered in the University. Eleven ELS services were listed in the questionnaire and respondents were asked questions about their 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

In response to the questions asked about the availability of eight ICTs hardware in the Middle East Technical University (METU) library, more than 85% of all the respondents confirmed that computer, printers, internet, bar code readers, CD-ROM readers/writers, security check systems and photocopying machine are available in the library. This indicates that students are aware of the ICT 72

VOL. 1, NO. 2, Oct 2010

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2010 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org (Note: x2/df the ratio between Chi-square and degrees of freedom, GFI is Goodness of Fit Index, AGFI is Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index, CFI is Comparative Fit Index, NFI is Normed Fit Index, RMSEA is Root Mean Square Error of Approximation)

hardware. In response to the questions about the availability of 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 Electronic Database with only 8% of the entire respondent confirming its availability. This also indicates a high degree of awareness of the hardware apart from Electronic Database that needs adequate sensitization. 5.3 International versus National Students

Table 5: T Test and P Values for Participant Groups

Female Dependent Variable Behavioral Intention Use Behavioral Behavioral Intention Use Behavioral Category National International National International National International National International T-test 2.41 3.25 4.30 4.20 2.20 4.21 4.37 5.40 P-Value <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001

The four groups result estimation using LISREL are as shown 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 constructs PE, 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 the dependent construct of behavioral intent and 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 the dependent variable) as shown in Figure 4 and Table 8, international male students model shows predictive efficiency 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) as shown 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
Group Comparison Recommend ed Value International National Students International Students National Students KMO Bartlett Spheri city <0.05 000 000 000 000 Cronba chs Alpha 0.7 0.879 0.921 0.883 0.962 PValue <0.05 0.0000 0 0.0000 4 0.0000 4 0.0000 4 ChiSqu are/ df <3 1.51 1.56 1.56 1.56 RAM SEA 0.08 0.037 0.071 0.071 0.071

Male

Table 6: The factor-loading matrix with varimax rotation

Factor Loading Matrix with Varimax rotation for All Students
PE1 PE2 PE3. PE4 EE1 EE2 EE3 EE4 EE5 EE6 SI1 SI2 SI3 FC1 FC2 FC3 FC4 FC .245 .219 .232 .155 .105 .491 .230 .115 .249 .171 .140 .157 .214 .768 .673 .828 .758 .730 .171 .125 .304 .038 .366 EE .068 .180 .084 -.055 .707 .605 .787 .767 .811 .810 .133 .271 .152 -.029 .329 .100 .069 .318 .197 .054 .410 .481 .176 PE .813 .779 .815 .641 .070 .194 .293 .025 .106 .102 .031 .160 .132 .364 .112 .125 .138 .154 .124 .126 .059 .348 .160 SI .253 .033 .176 .325 .076 .008 -.006 .312 .164 .035 .825 .801 .792 .180 .035 .067 -.019 .085 .026 .160 .104 .042 .126 BI .159 .084 .075 .167 .280 -.019 .003 .167 .073 .190 .074 .098 .072 .063 .354 -.016 .144 .306 .905 .895 .149 .055 .067 UB -.039 .217 .282 .300 .135 .244 .006 .191 -.015 .047 .179 -.095 .045 .180 .038 .202 .200 .-129 -.002 .142 .711 .723 .763

>0.5 0.758 0.702 0.730 0.740

FC5 BI1 BI2 UB1 UB2 UB3

Female

Male

Table 4: Goodness-of-Fit Results of the LISREL General Model

GFI Recommended Actual Value >0.90 0.956 AGFI >0.80 0.860 RMSEA <0.08 0.069 /df <3 1.45
2

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. a. Rotation converged in 6 iterations.

P-value <0.05 <0.0001

CFI >0.90 0.974

NFI >0.90 0.943

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Figure 3: International Female Participants Model

Figure 5: International Male Participants Model

Figure 4: National Female Participants Model Figure 6: National Male Participants Model

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Table 7: Comparison of National and International Model Contributions

Groups Constructs International (N=58) 0.20 0.48 0.28 0.78 0.32 0.41 0.35 0.20 0.74 0.25 National (N=58) 0.30 0.58 0.12 0.63 0.20 0.50 0.51 0.02 0.60 0.18 No.of Questions Asked 4 6 3 6 3 3 4 6 3 6 3 3 No.of Questions Retained 4 5 2 2 2 2 4 5 2 2 2 2

Female (N=60)

PE EE SI FC BI UB

easily and conveniently access the ELS than the students living outside the campus. To actually increase acceptance of ELS, the research suggest that the university and any other university that is working towards increasing acceptance of ELS should make accessibility (facilitating conditions and effort expectancy) of the ELS at both outside and inside the campus easy. 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 more pronounced for males and females in the international category. This hypothesis is supported. Though previous works on 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 fact shows that social influence has a more pronounced effect on 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 national males as shown in Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 and also summarized Table 7. This is as expected since international students 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 of facilitating condition; through social facilitation and social comparison the groups function as a motivator and can provide necessary assistance especially for 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 for different 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 factor for 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 with the previous studies (e.g., Venkatesh & Davis [7]); the effect of subjective norm to usage intention is significant under mandatory and inexperienced use situation. 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

Male (N=56)

PE EE SI FC BI UB

Table 8: Comparison of International and National Models Prediction

Gender Female Male Model International National International National Behavioral Intention 32% 20% 25% 18% Use Behavior 56% 62% 61% 78% Total 88% 82% 86% 96%

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 specific results. 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 the acceptance 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 use ELS 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 facility in-campus than out-campus since majority of the participants stays inside the university campus and can

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pronounced within the national group when compared to their international counterpart. This Hypothesis is only partially supported. There is a significant difference in the effect exerted on behavior intention by performance expectancy between the international and national group. The model shows that national male group has performance expectancy of 50% as opposed to 41% of international male group while national females 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 the performance expectancy of national male group is higher at 50%, the performance expectancy of the national females (30%) is lower than performance expectancy 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 long as it is useful. In other words, performance expectancy is an important 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 that performance expectancy cannot be interpreted in isolation without some other factors like effort expectancy and facilitating 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 international users (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 since difference 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. H3: Gender and Nationality will moderate the effect exerted on behavior intention by effort expectancy such that the 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 more dependent 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 have higher tendency to use the ELS system even when it is complex. In other words, Performance expectancy is an important factor for males more than the effort expectancy while effort expectancy determines acceptance for the females 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 the system. 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 of alternatives 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 to spend a lot of time and energy searching through complex ELS 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 agrees with the work of Pontiggia and Virili [42] which shows that technology acceptance is basically a choice among different alternative 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 females respectively 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, facilitating condition is very crucial. Our initial assertion that facilitating condition will not be as important for national students owing to the availability of alternatives which includes resources from friends and families seems to be wrong. 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 still exhibits 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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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2010 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

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 use ELS 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 facility in-campus than out-campus since majority of the participants stays inside the university campus and can easily and conveniently access the ELS than the students living outside the campus. To actually increase acceptance of ELS, the research suggest that the university and any other university that is working towards increasing acceptance 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, facilitating condition, 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 the most important factors for the four group of user, however, for international female group effort expectancy, social influence 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 and social influence are the critical factors. Likewise for international males, listed in decreasing order of importance, 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 treated technology users in the same way regardless of their gender and nationality. Nevertheless, the effect of this factor on acceptance has being found significant. These variations found in users perceptions in relation to the use of ELS illustrate the need for considering the effect of gender and nationality in the design and improvement of these systems. It is concluded that the differences discovered in this research 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 through facilitating conditions, , effort expectancy and performance expectancy. Institutions may arrange training programs to develop 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 feature during the induction of new students especially for international students. Also paring international students to pair leaders could also function as a social facilitation to motivate them to use ELS. This research was carried out in a university environment 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 study therefore proposes conducting similar study on larger number of participants and in another environment. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work reported in this paper was carried out when the Author was a graduate student of Middle East Technical University, Turkey. The author appreciates their provision of enabling environment for which the research was conducted. REFERENCES [1] J. C. Westland and T. Clark (2000) Global Electronic Commerce: Theory and Case Studies. Boston, MA: MIT Press. [2] Leedy, P. (1993). Practical Research, Planning and Design: Columbus, Ohio, Merrill, 17-42. [3] Wood, F. et al, (1995). Information Skills for Student Centered learning. The Association for Information Management. Milton Keynes, London, UK, 134 148. [4] Gender and Ageing: Problems, Perceptions, and Policies, United Nations Economic and Social Council, New York, E/CN.6/1999.3, 1999. [5] Morris et al (2005): Gender And Age Differences In Employee Decisions About New Technology. Ieee Transactions On Engineering Management, Vol. 52, No. 1, [6] Wang et al (2010), Mobile Activities in Mobile Internet.International Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing: p 1282-1284. [7] Venkatesh V. et al (2003) User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view, MIS Quart., vol. 26, pp. 425478,. [8] Neuman, D. 2004. Learning and the Digital Library. Youth information seeking behavior. Theory, model and issues (pp. 65-95). 77

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