An Investigation of the Adoption of Social Media Applications by Faculty Members at a Prominent University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

A report by Hootsuite (2018) stated that the average time of daily use of social media applications by Saudis in 2017 was two hours and 34 minutes. Even though statistics show that social media applications are very widespread among students, they also suggest that these media are not being utilized by many faculty members for teaching and learning purposes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influence the adoption of social media applications for teaching and learning purposes by faculty members at a prominent university in Saudi Arabia. The Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB) was used as this study’s theoretical framework. These factors included: Actual Use, Behavior Intention, Attitude (Compatibility, Ease of Use, Usefulness), Subjective Norm (Peer Influence, Superior Influence, Student Influence), Perceived Behavioral Control (Self-efficacy, and Facilitating Conditions). Additional research factors include selected demographic and experiential factors from the literature, notably gender, age, and academic field. A survey research approach was used. The researcher developed an instrument to measure the DTPB factors. All faculty members at a university in the west region of Saudi Arabia were invited to participate. The invitation emails were sent through the Deanship of Information Technology. A total of 246 responses were received, of which 194 were complete, and 186 were both complete and valid. Overall, the result of the correlational analysis for Research Question 2 showed that Behavior Intention had a significant positive correlation with the Actual Use (r (176) = 0.903, p < .01). For Research Question 3, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis, as well as the path analysis, indicated that Attitude was found to be the strongest predictor of Behavior Intention (R2 = .819, F(1, 168) = 668.89, p = .000), while Perceived Behavioral Control, Subjective Norm, and the other demographic and experiential factors were not. For Research Question 4, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis, as well as the path analysis, indicated that Attitude was found to be the strongest predictor of Actual Use (R2 = .767, F(1, 168) = 544.973, p = .000), while Perceived Behavioral Control, Subjective Norm, and the other demographic and experiential factors were not. The additional analysis provided some deeper insight onto the factors that comprise Attitude. The results of this additional analysis indicated that Perceived Usefulness and Compatibility were two dimensions of Attitude that made large, significant contributions to the prediction of Behavior Intention and Actual Use. Finally, recommendations and implications are provided for university administrators.