Technology acceptance model: Worried about the cultural influence?
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has shown in the USA that the Perceived Usefulness (PU) and the Perceived ease-of-use (PEU) determine the intention to use (IU) a specific technology or information system. In this research, the TAM model is validated in Chile, considering the cultural factors of this country, through an application of the model to university students. The results show that the TAM model works in Chile, regardless of the studied technology or the cultural aspects of the country. Finally, new questions arise related to this topic such as the influence of the intensity of use, familiarity with the technology and the individual’s reference group for the technologies aimed to encourage communication among people.
Users and technologies in education: A pending course
This research aims to determine which factors influence the Intention to Use Technologies in the education sphere, by using Technology Acceptance Model with university students across two technologies having similar charac‐ teristics: SIGA and SGDI. The results shows that the most important factor when determining Intention to Use of an educational technology is Perceived Useful‐ ness. Subsequently, TAM is applied considering the moderating effect of inten‐ sity, finding that for intensive SGDI users, the influence of Perceived Usefulness is greater than in normal users, and conversely, the influence of Perceived Ease of Use in intensive users of SIGA is greater than that in normal users, whereas the impact of Perceived Usefulness decreases. Recommendations states that future investigations should focus on the study of the impact generated by the use of software in classrooms, both for students during their training process and for professors in their educational work.
Surfing the social networks
This research aims to determine why people use Social Networks using an adaptation of the UTAUT2 model. The proposed model considers Subjective Norm, Perceived Playfulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and Perceived Usefulness as predictors of the Intention to Use. Five social networks were chosen in order to carry out this research: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. Findings shows that social networks are more useful to serve his or her purposes when more people close to the individual are using them. Perceived Playfulness proves to be a strong predictor of Intention to Use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all these social networks are used for leisure purposes. Perceived Usefulness proves to be the most powerful predictor for Intention to Use in LinkedIn, this social network is mainly used for work purposes. Finally, both Perceived Playfulness and Perceived Usefulness are good predictors of Intention to Use Twitter. Implications are discussed.
