Adoption of e-Books: A Digital Textbook Perspective

Whereas the rise of e-book use has undermined printed books, it is somewhat surprising that students still prefer printed books for intensive reading and would rather use e-contents just for fun. This calls for a holistic study that investigates what facilitates or hinders e-book use in the digital era. Drawing upon UTAUT and cognitive judgmental processes, a research framework was tested with 1,419 university students. Further, the responses were split into those students with digital textbook exposure and those without it to examine their differing mental schemas. Results confirm that performance expectancy is the primary factor in the digital textbook adoption. Effort expectancy and facilitating conditions are significant to the experienced, but not to the non-experienced. The experienced do not see result demonstrability and output quality as variables that influence usefulness, while the other group perceives them to be critical. Theoretical and practical implications of this research are also discussed.