Factors influencing students’ sustained use of open source communities

Abstract

The application of open source technology promotes information technological progress. At the same time, open source information technology is also inseparable from the innovation and contribution of open source talents to open source information technology. In this study, the main purpose is to identify the factors that influence the sustained use of open source communities among students in Chinese higher education, using a mixed model to analyze the main factors of this study. In the mixed model, there are seven factors that influence students in higher education’s acceptance of technology in the open source community: relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, perceived ease of use, perceived attitude, and perceived usefulness. The sample of this study was 712 students. The research results of PLS-SEM analysis show that these seven factors have a significant impact on students’ willingness to sustain the use of open source communities, and there is an interaction between these seven factors. At the same time, perceived attitude and perceived usefulness have mediating effects in the mixed model of this study. In addition, the study also discusses the gender, major, university, and grade of the sample, and analyzes their impact on students’ sustain intention. The willingness to sustain using open source talents analysis in this study can provide inspiration for the cultivation of open source talents.

Keywords

• Open source community
• sustained use intention
• higher education
• innovation diffusion theory
• technology acceptance model
• Information & Communication Technology