Studying the Impact of Perceived Usefulness, Ease of Use, and Trust on Attitude, Intention, and Behaviour to Use the AI ChatGPT Application in the Education Environment: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT : Background: The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools into higher education has created an urgent imperative to understand the cognitive and affective determinants of student technology acceptance. Objective: This study investigates the impact of Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), and Trust (T) on students’ Attitude to Use (ATU), Intention to Use (ITU), and Behavior to Use (BTU) the AI ChatGPT application in the educational environment. Methods: Grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the study adopts a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design (n = 164) sampling final-year undergraduates from two contrasting disciplinary contexts Finance and Banking, and Architecture at two universities in Baghdad, Iraq. Pearson correlation and simple linear regression analyses were performed using IBM SPSS v25. Results: All nine hypothesized relationships were statistically supported (p < 0.01). Trust was the strongest predictor of Attitude to Use (R² = 0.276), while Perceived Ease of Use demonstrated the highest explanatory power among all predictors (R² = 0.248 for ATU). Conclusion: The findings extend TAM into the generative AI-in-education domain, confirm Trust as a critical adoption driver beyond PU and PEOU, and provide actionable guidance for universities seeking to integrate ChatGPT responsibly and effectively into formal learning environments.