Assessing the intention to use e‐book among engineering undergraduates in Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831111174459 |
| Pages | 512-528 |
| Published date | 06 September 2011 |
| Date | 06 September 2011 |
| Author | Malathi Letchumanan,Rohani Tarmizi |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Assessing the intention to use
e-book among engineering
undergraduates in Universiti
Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
Malathi Letchumanan
Institute for Mathematical Research, Universiti Putra Malaysia,
Serdang, Malaysia, and
Rohani Tarmizi
Laboratory of Statistical Services and Computing,
Institute for Mathematical Research, Universiti Putra Malaysia,
Serdang, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intention of using e-books as learning
material among undergraduates from an engineering department by using the technology acceptance
model (TAM) and gender as its external variable.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey through questionnaire was conducted to collect data
from the respondents. Data from 169 respondents who had experience in using e-book were analyzed
in terms of factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Results – The analysis shows that perceived ease of use is positively related to perceived usefulness.
Perceived usefulness has significant effect on attitude and intention to use e-books. Meanwhile,
attitude has significant effect on intention to use. However, perceived ease of use has no significant
effect on attitude towards using e-books. In addition, gender appeared to have no significant effects
either on perceived ease of use or perceived usefulness.
Research limitations/implications – The study did not utilize the entire TAM where actual
technology use is not included in this study.
Practical implications – The study is important in terms of obtaining better understanding of
e-book reading intention among engineering undergraduates who are the real users of e-books. By
obtaining the respondents’ perception on their intentions, action can be taken on how to motivate the
non-users of e-books to form the intention to use e-books.
Originality/value – This is believed to be the first published study of engineering undergraduates’
intention on using e-books in Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Keywords Technologyacceptance model, Undergraduates,Gender, Malaysia,Information technology,
E-books, E-learning
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Since their introduction, electronic books (e-books) have undergone a revolution in their
appearance that has been largely driven by the emergence of new technologies, new
competition and ever-changing customers’ needs. Their penetration into the academic
environment has led to a growing concern among academicians, publishers and
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
LHT
29,3
512
Received March 2011
Revised April 2011
Accepted May 2011
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 29 No. 3, 2011
pp. 512-528
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378831111174459
learners. For instance, scholarly and technical publishers like McGraw Hill an d Wiley
compete with each other to sell their titles as e-books (Cassell and Mercado, 2009).
While competition has intensified between e-book providers and publishers,
simultaneous attempts have been made to improve e-book service quality and
reduce selling costs, as evidenced by technological developments such as advanced
e-book reading devices and online accessibility. However, in spite of the huge
investments in e-book markets, consumer take-up has been slower than anticipated
(Cox, 2004).
Lately, many educational institutions are offering innovative online degree
programs, expending their educational territories without time and space barriers and
complementing their traditional offline classes with e-learning educational tools. To
support the reference activities, these educational institutions upload the related e-book
links in their e-learning system to provide comprehensive reference materials to the
learners. These learners claim that e-book services offered with the e-learning system
help to reduce their visits to the libraries and enhance learning effectiveness (Littman
and Connaway, 2004).
The success of e-book adoption is largely dependent upon the implementation of an
educational model which addresses the learner’s needs and the content relevancy of the
e-book for a particular course. Designing a good e-book is a complicated task and
requires a complete list of user requirements in terms of design features and course
contents. However, many e-books in the market are merely the scanned copies of the
printed books that are made available via the internet in the form of Portable
Document Format (PDF) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). They lack many
online applications and design rules; therefore, they are not suitable for all types of
learners.
Generally, E-book is simply referred as the digital representation of the prin ted
material which is delivered trough mediums such as computer, e-book reader, PDA,
mobile phone, internet, intranet and extranet. E-book is also created with a lot of new
features such as search and cross reference functions, multimedia features and
hypertext links (Vassiliou and Rowley, 2008).
The development of e-book technology in Malaysia is strongly related to the rapid
growth of its information and communication technology (ICT) industry. The
Malaysian government is one of the driving forces with the Ministry of Higher
Education (MOHE), Malaysia, helping local universities to subscribe to netLibrary at a
cost of Ringgit Malaysia 1.04 million (Haslina, 2010). Local universities provide e-book
services in their campus libraries to cater to the increasing needs for reference
materials by a growing number of learners. Examples are Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Universiti Utara Malaysia, University of Malaya, International Islamic University,
Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Open Universiti Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Mara
and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
E-book services were introduced in UPM in 2008. Since the launch, no research has
been conducted to track the acceptance pattern of e-books among UPM students. The
statistics from aggregators and publishers indicate that students from engineering
backgrounds are the frequent users of the e-book as compared to students from other
disciplines. Hence, the researcher believes that by investigating the engineering
undergraduates’ e-book utilization intention, meaningful and useful information on
how to form positive intention in students (non-users and rare users of e-book) from
The intention to
use e-book
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