Exploring UTAUT Model in Mobile 4.5G Service: Moderating Social–Economic Effects of Gender and Awareness

The current study aims to examine how students’ intentions to use 4.5G mobile phones are affected by the social-economic factors of performance expectancy, cost, effort expectancy, and social influence. This study is based on the perspectives of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The central assumption of this study is that when students use 4.5G mobile services to source information at university, their academic performance is likely to improve. From eight private and public universities in Malaysia, 2117 students were enrolled in this study. We investigated the effects of gender and awareness as moderators on the relationships among the variables of interest. The findings showed that social influence and performance expectancy positively affected university students’ intentions to use 4.5G mobile phones. The researchers conducted a multigroup analysis to confirm the moderating effect of gender among the underlying relationships in the model. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that, unlike awareness, gender did not moderate social influence, effort expectancy, performance expectancy, or the cost of students’ intentions to use 4.5G mobile phones. The implications of the proposed approach, considering the digital transformation concept, could be a topic for future research