Investigation of Factors Influencing Students' Intentions to Use the Internet: Jordanian Universities Context

Abstract

The increasing use of information technology (IT) applications within universities context increases the importance of exploring cognitive and psychological factors that might influence successful introduction and usage of IT. Consideration of these factors including students' intention to use IT is receiving a huge interest in recent literature to avoid what so called the technological disenfranchisement. Accordingly, the present study investigates certain attitudinal factors that may influence the students' (beneficiary) intentions to use the Internet. The factors investigated in this study include perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust, self-efficacy, and privacy. Accordingly, this study is an attempt to framework these factors within the context of Jordanian universities as an example from a developing countries context where the scarce of the available literature is a major concern. The findings of this study emphasis the importance of perceived usefulness, user's self-efficacy and privacy as determinants for students' intentions to use the Internet. Other factors including perceived ease of use and trust were excluded from the proposed framework due to their none significant effect on students' intentions to use the Internet.