ICT Acceptance in Education during Covid-19: Analyzing the Mediation Role of Social Influence

Abstract

Education in India, whether primary or higher has largely been conducted with physical contact, classroom set-up, and in off-line mode. Learning with the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), though has been in use but not widely accepted as in other western countries. Also, there is very little recognition of online degrees for jobs until recently. Further, appropriate facilitating condition for ICT enabled education is not widely available. However, pandemic forced all these hurdles to take a back seat and all the educational institutions started practicing ICT enabled education ignoring the issues related to the acceptance of this mode by the end-users i.e., students. Though Lockdown ensured social distancing, however, it also ensured increased social influence with various modes of social interaction available to students. On this backdrop, the present study attempts to explore the modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by analyzing the mediating role of Social Influence on acceptance of ICT enabled learning. Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) was used in the study. The data for the current study has been collected electronically from the students of undergraduate programs during Lockdown. A total of 183 usable data was obtained and analyzed using Smart PLS3. The direct and indirect impact of Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE) and Facilitating Condition (FC) on Behavioral Intention (BI) toward acceptance of ICT in education was measured. The result suggests that social influence partially mediate the relationship between performance expectancy and behavior intention toward e-learning acceptance during COVID -19.