Acceptance of YouTube for Islamic Information Acquisition: A Multi-group Analysis of Students’Academic Discipline

YouTube has been recognized as an important information source for the millennial generation. This paper aims to identify the factors affecting Malaysian higher education students’ acceptance of YouTube for Islamic information acquisition and to investigate if any notable distinction that exists between the students’ path coefficients in Islamic academic discipline and the other disciplines. Employing the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (UTAUT) as its theoretical foundation, data were collected by distributing a self-administered survey to 795 students actively using YouTube for information seeking. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and multi-group analysis (MGA) in SmartPLS 3.2.7 software were used to analyze the data. Three constructs of the UTAUT model, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influences, were found to significantly and positively influence behavioural intention to use YouTube for Islamic information acquisition in both groups of students. Facilitating conditions demonstrates significantly negative relationship with YouTube acceptance for students in other academic disciplines than for Islamic academic discipline. Additionally, the MGA analysis’ findings suggest that determinants’ factor coefficients of YouTube acceptance for Islamic information acquisition are not significantly different between students in Islamic academic disciplines and the other disciplines. This study validates the UTAUT model to understand the determinant of social media application usage in a new study context.

@article{Ishak2022,
  title     = {Acceptance of YouTube for Islamic Information Acquisition: A Multi-group Analysis of Students’Academic Discipline},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {13},
  number    = {7},
  year      = {2022},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {M. S Ishak and A Sarkowi and M. F Mustaffa and R Mustapha},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2022.01307108},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2022.01307108}
}