Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) applied in higher education research: A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

Higher education must evolve and adapt to technological changes in developing skilled human capital. Nevertheless, each technology has features that may eventually lead to user acceptance. This paper reviews factors that led to technology acceptance in the higher education context based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model since 2009. The related articles were extracted from the Scopus database. A screening process was performed to filter the related articles guided by the PRISMA approach. Specific keywords were used for searching, and 50 articles were identified. Only 44 related articles were reviewed after the identification and screening processes. Bibliometric analysis was used to understand further and highlight the impact of past studies and certain trends of their works that would benefit future research. The review revealed that performance expectancy is the most critical determinant that could affect users' intention to accept technology used in higher education institutions when the original UTAUT and its extended framework were used. However, all variables revealed some inconsistencies. Future studies should further investigate the reason behind this occurrence. Most of the past studies used covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) as a data analysis tool when dealing with a complex model. This paper provides insights to policymakers in the higher education sector that are useful for their capital investment decision-making in future technology developments. It triggers that any technology that will be put into practice needs to be efficient and have features that could improve individual performance in performing tasks.