Title: Social media adoption among university students: the role of gender, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use

Authors: Michael Dzigbordi Dzandu; Henry Boateng; Franklin Gyamfi Agyemang; Fidelis Quansah

Addresses: Department of Business Informatics, Systems and Accounting, University of Reading, Reading, UK; Department of Information Studies, University of Ghana, P.O. Box LG 60, Legon, Ghana ' Department of Marketing and Customer Management, University of Ghana Business School, P.O. Box LG 78, Legon, Accra, Ghana ' Royal Ann College of Health, P.O. Box KS 6253, Kumasi, Ghana ' Department of Marketing, University of Professional Studies, P.O. Box LG 149, Madina, Accra, Ghana

Abstract: Social media adoption has been phenomenal especially among the youth. This study seeks to examine the effect of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and gender on social media adoption. The survey research design was used in this study to provide a basis for the generalisation of the findings of this study. The respondents were mostly youth and were selected using convenience sampling technique. Data was analysed using multiple regression. The findings indicate that, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use significantly predict social media adoption. However, there is no significant difference between males and females on adoption of social media. The implications of the results for the youth, teachers, technologist, marketers and developers of information systems have been put forward.

Keywords: social media adoption; gender; technology adoption model; TAM; perceived ease of use; perceived usefulness; Facebook; Twitter; university students; higher education; young people; youth.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMILE.2016.077584

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2016 Vol.4 No.2, pp.124 - 136

Received: 07 Sep 2015
Accepted: 15 Jan 2016
Published online: 06 Jul 2016 *

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