Investigating Antecedents For College Students’ Behavioral Intention Of Using Mobile Library

With the development of mobile internet technology, many domestic universities begin to employ mobile library to enable college students to more conveniently visit their libraries’ information resources. However, as investigated, only relevant few college students actually use mobile library, resulting in a waste of education resource to some extent. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively explore the antecedents for college students’ adoption of mobile library, so as to provide relevant advices to universities regarding how to better facilitate the usage of mobile library among college students.Echoing this call, and based on a comprehensive theoretical framework in user adoption area, i.e., UTAUT, and also the specific characteristics of mobile library, this study proposes a research framework to predict college students’ intention to use mobile library. Specifically, considering the research context of mobile library, mobile library’s informativeness, college students’self-efficacy, social norm, and perceived facilitation are justified as the major components of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitation in UTAUT. Considering the specific research context of mobile library, the moderators, such as age gender, experience and voluntariness of use in prior UTAUT models are less likely to be of significance, therefore, they are cancelled. Also, canceling use behavior, for using mobile library is not popular among college students.Meanwhile, the main users of mobile library, i.e., college students are often featured as being composed of undergraduates and postgraduates. To this end, this study particularly compares the casual relationships in UTAUT model based on the differences between these two types of students.Questionnaire survey method is employed to collected data, and the PLS technique of structural equation modeling is applied to testing the proposed research model and hypotheses. A questionnaire survey is conducted in3universities in China mainland, which have already implemented mobile library, and a total of251valid respondents are obtained at last. Results of the data analysis indicate that:(1) mobile library’s informativeness, college students’self-efficacy and subject can directly and positively impact on usage intention;(2) Compared with postgraduates, undergraduates students’usage intention is not more likely to be enabled by library’s invormativeness and perceived facilitation. Compared with undergraduates, postgraduates students’usage intention is not more likely to be enabled by subject norm.Based on UTAUT, this study proposes a more comprehensive research model to predict college students’ intention to use mobile library, not only adding to our knowledge on user adoption of mobile library but also extending the UTAUT theory. Besides, the study can provide theoretical proof for advices and guidelines with regards to more effectively facilitating the usage of mobile library among college students. In general, the study makes great significant.