
J. K. L. Poon
[1]. In 2009, the sales of e-books constitute only 3% to 5% of total sales revenue [1].
Nowadays, academicians have a clear and emerging desire to provide quality teaching and learning in a more
cost-effective and innovative manner by taking advantage of the rich media and the access to information pro-
vided by the Internet. For instance, many academicians upload e-book links to their e-learning platform to pro-
vide comprehensive reference materials to students. Moreover, today’s students are becoming more technologi-
cally savvy. Since they grew up with digital devices, students aspire to integrate more technology into their aca-
demic study [1].
The 2010 Horizon Report predicts the e-book will be one of the six technologies most likely to affect higher
education in the next two to three years [4]. The emergence of e-books leads to the following impacts to teach-
ing and learning:
1) Teachers will be under increasing pressure from students to switch to e-books for their courses because of
its comparatively lesser cost. Moreover, e-books are more “green conscious” [5].
2) Micro-content will become the trend. Mi cro-content refers to individual articles and single chapters of in-
dividual works, rather than entire books [6].
3) The barrier to entry for creating and distributing e-book content will lessen. More teachers and communi-
ties will create their own e-book content that best meets the needs of their courses and students [7].
4) Student reading experience will be enhanced because more publishers will offer multimedia content in
e-books [8].
5) Student learning efficiency will be improved because with e-books, students can find relevant content fast-
er by simply searching for keywords. In addition, they can use e-books anytime and anywhere. Consequently,
the amount of time and effort to accomplish the course tasks (e.g., research papers and classroom preparation)
will be minimized, while the number of physical visits to the library will be reduced.
Currently, many e-books in the market still stem from a model that simply translates textbooks into digital
files, and made available via the internet in the form of Portable Document Format (PDF) or Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML). Obviously, e-books are still in the pre-mature stage. The market for e-books is in its deve-
lopmental process [9]. The low uptake of e-book continues to rouse the interests of publishers and academicians
[10] [11]. The success of e-book adoption largely depends on the implementation of an educational model that
addresses the learner needs as well as the content relevance of the e-book for a particular course.
Designing a good e-book is a complicated task and requires a complete list of user requirements in terms of
design features and course contents. Hence, understanding consumer behavioral intention to use e-books is a key
issue worth looking into because behavioral intention is an individual’s subjective probability of performing a
specific behavior, and is the major determinant of actual usage behavior [12]. Moreover, the willingness of con-
sumers to use e-books can substantially increase revenue. In this connection, there is a need to research the fac-
tors that affect the adoption of e-books by taking into account existing technology adoption models [3].
2. Literature Review
This study investigates consumer behavioral intention in using e-books. Among the several theoretical perspec-
tives to address IT adoption and usage, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is widely regarded as a par-
simonious model with high explanatory power of variance in user behavioral intention related to IT adoption,
and usage across a wide variety of context such as information systems, personal computers, e-banking, mobile
technology, web browsers, web retailing, and online purchase intentions [13] [14]. However, there is scant re-
search on the investigation of the factors affecting e-book adoption using TAM.
TAM is rooted in the theory of reasoned actions, in which a model suggests that beliefs influence attitudes,
which influence intention, and thus generate behaviors [15]. In TAM, explanations of why users behave in par-
ticular ways toward IT predominantly focus on instrumental beliefs, such as perceived usefulness and ease of
use as drivers of usage intentions. Prior work related to TAM, however, suggests that holistic experiences with
technology as captured in constructs, such as personal innovativeness of information technology [16], perceived
costs [17] [18], environmental consciousness, and social influence [19], are potentially important explanatory
variables in technology acceptance. Factors influencing the intention to use technology may vary, while the de-
gree of influence of the same factors may differ with the different stages of adoption [20].
To understand customer behavior intention to adopt e-books and the lack of holistic approach on the subject,
this project investigates the intention of college students in using e-books as learning materials. This study will