PLS path model for testing the moderating effects in the relationships among formative IS usage variables of academic digital libraries

Digital library research has developed rapidly over the past decade, and millions of dollars have been spent on building digital libraries. However, studies on the awareness of digital libraries are still scarce. Previous research indicates that many potential users may still not use or benefit from using digital libraries. Moreover, the studies on the awareness concept of digital libraries and for their longer term, is only beginning. In academia, transition from physical to digital libraries has been largely taken place in most of higher institutions in Malaysia. Owing to the Internet, Web and digital technologies, the academic library are now inevitably digital. Past researches majorly reported the usage of digital libraries and on recent studies focussing on the awareness. As far as academic digital library is concerned, studies on interacting the awareness factors in the relationships among the digital library usage constructs using formative model has not been located so far. In formative model, the measures are treated as the cause, as opposed to reflective model (where the measures are treated as the effect). Many social science researchers tend to have a priori assumption on the measures as reflective which may lead to misspecification of model. In bridging this gap, this paper attempts to examine the relationships between digital library usage and individual impact where the usage measures were hypothesized as formative measures. The relationships are tested with the incorporation of interaction effects of digital library awareness factors. The tests are performed in academic digital libraries of higher institutions in Malaysia. All of the hypothesized causal paths among digital library usage constructs and individual impact tested using partial least squares (PLS) model were supported in both of the main effects and interaction effects models. Moreover the incorporation of digital library awareness factors has shown a moderate effect size, addressing the need of such factors in moderating the relationships between the digital library usage and individual impact for academic purposes