| Electronic learning is increasingly becoming an important application of information technology in institutions of higher learning. Just as in any other technology, there are factors that affect the users' behavioral intention to adopt it. The unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) identified performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and the social norm as some of the factors that may influence this behavioral intention. Other factors such as age, gender, previous computer experience, perceived voluntariness, and computer self-efficacy have been found to moderate this relationship. Cultural factors, as generated by Hofstede in his 1980s studies, has also been found to have an impact in this relationship in previous studies, leading to the validation of the UTAUT in the US, China, India, and Saudi Arabia. These studies have detected cultural driven similarities and differences in the moderator relationships in these countries. This study used a web survey of 1500 university faculty in a developing country in East Africa. Data from 162 respondents was analyzed using Partial Least Squares. The study found a correlation between behavioral intention and the three independent variables namely the social norm, the effort expectancy, and the performance expectancy. As had been hypothesized, the social norm had the strongest path coefficient, and effort expectancy was a stronger predictor that performance expectancy. Age, gender, voluntariness, and computer self-efficiency were found to be significant moderators, while the moderating effect of experience on both effort and performance expectancy was found to be non-significant. The collectiveness and uncertainty dimensions of culture were therefore found to introduce some aspects of difference in the application of the UTAUT model in a developing country in East Africa. |
