The Effect of Social Influence and Facilitating Conditions on Electronic Textbooks Adoption in Tanzanian Secondary Schools: The Moderating Role of School Type

Abstract

This paper addressed the Social Influence and Facilitating Conditions as key determinants that influence the adoption of electronic textbooks for advanced-level students learning purposes in Dar es Salaam region-Tanzania. The study employed survey research designs and strategies to collect data and test research hypotheses. Simple random sampling was employed in the selection of respondents. Questionnaires were used to obtain needed data from 370 students from public and private secondary schools in Dar es Salaam region. The data were analyzed through multi-regression analysis where descriptive and inferential statistics were done with the aid of SPSS version 26. Validity was attained by consulting experts in the field of publishing and research while reliability was tested by piloting the research instruments and calculating the Cronbach Alpha. A Cronbach value of 0.77 for Social Influence and 0.85 for Facilitating Conditions was obtained and thus the instruments were considered reliable. The findings revealed that advanced-level students’ intention to adopt e-textbooks in Tanzania schools requires the availability of facilitating conditions such as infrastructures, expertise and human resources. Further, the paper results posited that facilitating conditions, moderated by school type, have shown significant negative effects between private scholars and public scholars on adoption of e-textbooks. On the other hand, when moderated by school type, the paper found that Social Influence had a significant positive effect between private scholars and public scholars. In particular, this paper's results are of importance to publishers, students, teachers, application developers and school management. Finally, the paper recommends policy change on the use of mobile devices and its contents for building students’ behavioural intention to e- adopt textbook in Tanzania secondary schools.

Keywords: Behavioural Intention, UTAUT Model, BITETA, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions, Private secondary schools, Public secondary schools

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-18-12

Publication date:June 30^th 2023