The effects of locus of control on university students’ mobile learning adoption

Since mobile devices have become cheaper, easily accessible, powerful, and popular and the cost of wireless access has declined gradually, mobile learning (m-learning) has begun to spread rapidly. To further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of m-learning for university students, it is critical to understand whether they use m-learning. However, there has been little research on investigating the factors influencing university students’ adoption of m-learning. This study empirically investigates the factors that affect students’ acceptance of m-learning by integrating locus of control, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (from the technology acceptance model), and perceived behavioral control (from the theory of planned behavior) into the theoretical model. This study is one of the first to examine the effects of locus of control on m-learning adoption. Data were collected from 176 undergraduate students at a large, public, research-intensive university located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The partial least squares approach was used to evaluate the explanatory power and causal links of the model, and it was found that locus of control can influence students’ beliefs (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived behavioral control) toward m-learning. The three beliefs all had a significant effect on behavioral intention to use m-learning. Future research and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.