Factors affecting the Adoption and Meaningful Use of Social Media: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

As the number of university students using social media increases, the interest in assessing the adoption of social media applications and the factors encouraging it whether inside or outside classrooms has also risen. Nevertheless, evaluating the educational outcomes of integrating social media in the university teaching has not been researched sufficiently. Therefore, this study aims at exploring these educational outcomes and assessing a research model of antecedents and the cost of social media use. It also determines the factors of implementing social networking media for e-learning in the United Arab Emirates higher education institutions utilizing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which stresses the Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness along with the Behavior Intention to use social networking media. The quantitative response of 408 university students embedding social media in their teaching methods was analyzed. To predict an Emirati student’s behavioral intention to use social networking media for e-learning, a partial least squares (PLS) analysis points out that Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness are important factors. Accordingly, the proposed model in this study illustrates the ways social media educational use positively influences efficient performances in the classroom.