Understanding social influence theory and personal goals in e-learning

This paper investigates important factors in shaping attitudes toward knowledge sharing by email in e-learning, based on social influence theory and self determination theory. It tests how the personal goals moderate the relationships in the model. An empirical test of the proposed model using an online survey was conducted with a sample of undergraduate college students who use email for class assignments. All social influence factors significantly influenced attitudes toward knowledge sharing by email (R-2 0.63) in the high personal goal group (186 participants), but social identity did not influence the attitude (R-2 0.54) in the low personal goal group (225 participants). The results will help e-learning and information systems researchers and practitioners to more fully understand the roles of social influence factors in developing and designing e-learning systems.